XnRetro is a free portable vintage photo effect creator for Linux, Windows and Mac which you can use to give your photos that old, retro look which you can probably find on family photos, the older ones at least. It can turn images into black and white, add lens flares, increase the brightness and also add a frame to round up everything with a nice Polaroid type image effect.
Interface of XnRetro is very simple. Top toolbar and menu above it are for photo management, opening, saving, zooming, rotating and so on. Down below everything is the effect editor starting with the image preview on the left. Tabs which you can see at the bottom holds 4 groups of effects, retro, light, vignette and frame. Each one of them loads up different effects to the strip above, Effect levels can be adjusted using all the various sliders which you can see on the right.
Similar software: Photomatic, Instaframe, AllSee.
Key features of XnRetro free vintage photo effect creator are:
- Simplicity – you don’t have to be Photoshop wiz to add vintage effects
- Retro effects – changes the color of the photo to give it a retro look
- Light effects – adds various different lens flares and “sun” effects
- Vignette effects – darkens photo edges to give it low lighting effect
- Comes with a fuzzy photo resize – select between small, medium, large
- Photo sharing – email, Flickr, Picasa, Tumblr, Facebook, Imgur, etc.
- Good format support – JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, PSD, TGA, PNM, and more
- Every effect is highly customizable – change values of each effect
- Portable – doesn’t require installation, just click and run
How to add vintage photo effect to photos with XnRetro free vintage photo effect creator
Open up the image where you’d like to see the vintage effect added by clicking on File >> Open, the usual. Once that the image is loaded, you just need to play with the vintage effects down below.
Use the 4 tabs at the bottom to switch between the 4 groups of effects that you can add. Slider at the bottom hides more options to the right of the strip. There’s dozens of different effects for you to choose. Use the settings next to the photo preview to change the strength of the effect as well as various other effects. When you’re done you can click on either File >> Save to just save the photo locally or you can click on the share button, like we did on the image above, to share the photo with the vintage effect online.
This is the end result of our vintage effect tweaks.
Vintage photo effect seems to be all the rage on the internet and if you would like to join in on the fun, then XnRetro is just the program you need. It’s very easy to use without a lot of complicated menus to open, and options to click. Just load up your image, select the effects you want to see, tweak its settings and you’re done. Give it a try and see how it goes.
