Step 17: Change The Blend Mode Of The "Noise" Layer To "Soft Light"

We need to blend all that noise into our image, and the first step in doing that is to change the layer's blend mode. With the "Noise" layer still selected, go up to the Blend Mode option in the top left corner of the Layers palette and change it from "Normal" to Soft Light:

As soon as you change the blend mode to "Soft Light", you'll be able to see your photo through the noise, even though there's still far too much of it:

Step 18: Lower The Opacity Of The "Noise" Layer

Go up to the Opacity option at the top of the Layers palette and lower the opacity of the "Noise" layer all the way down to somewhere between 10-15% so there's just a hint of graininess remaining. I'm going to lower mine to 13%:

Here's my photo now after lowering the opacity of the noise:

Another effect complete! Now let's add a little bit of wear and tear to the image by creating a few specks of dust and some scratches. Nothing extreme, just a subtle amount.

Step 19: Add A New Layer Named "Grain" And Fill It With Black

We need yet another new layer and we need to fill it with black. Since we've already done this twice, I'll save us a little time here and combine the whole process into one step. Hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. When the New Layer dialog box appears, name the layer Grain. We're naming it that because we'll be using Photoshop's "Grain" filter in a moment. Click OK to exit out of the dialog box and have Photoshop add the new layer at the top of the Layers palette.

Then, to fill the layer with black, go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Fill or use the keyboard shortcut Shift+F5. When the Fill dialog box appears, make sure all the options are still set to the way we had them before, with Contents set to Black, Mode set to Normal and Opacity set to 100%, then click OK to exit out of the dialog box and have Photoshop fill the new layer with black.

When you're done, you should have a new layer at the top of your Layers palette named "Grain", and the layer should be filled with solid black:

Your image in the document window will also once again be filled with black.

Step 20: Apply The "Grain" Filter

We're going to use Photoshop's "Grain" filter to add a little wear and tear to our image by adding some dust and scratches. Again, we're not going for an extreme amount of wear and tear here, just a little something to help make the photo look like it's been sitting in someone's shoe box for a few years. With the new "Grain" layer selected in the Layers palette, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Texture, and then choose Grain:

When the Grain filter dialog box appears, first set the Grain Type option to Vertical, then increase the Intensity value to around 70 and the Contrast value to around 80. You may need to play around with those values a bit while keeping an eye on the preview area. What you're looking for is just a few broken vertical white lines which will become dust and scratches on the image:

Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box. If you look at your image in the document window, you should see something like this:

We'll turn those white lines and specks into some dust and scratches next!