Follow a few simple steps to add some charm and nostalgia to your pictures. We shot these bikes outside of a museum in Essex, but they looked pretty ordinary and in need of some improvement.

Open your layers palette F7 and make a copy of your image by dragging the thumbnail over the copy icon at the bottom of the palette. Select the top image of the two and using the shortcut keys of Ctrl+shift+U remove all the colour from this layer. Call up the levels command Ctrl+L and adjust the sliders to lighten your image as shown below.

You need to good blacks, but retain detail in the whites as best you can as we have below.

Add a sepia tone to your image by calling up the hue and saturation palette Ctrl+U and ticking the little colorize box, bottom right as shown below.

Using the sliders change the hue setting to 25 and the saturation to 12 for a pleasant sepia effect. (Below)

To darken light areas like the petrol pumps make a selection of them using the magic wand tool, feather the edge of that selection by 1-2 pixels and adjust the levels sliders once again to darken just the pumps.

Remember that holding the shift key while using the magic wand tool will allow you to add to your selection.

Now try removing or masking parts of your top image to reveal some coloured areas from the original image below. Use either your eraser tool from the tool bar or use a layer mask as shown below. If you are using the eraser tool save your changes regularly because going back is more difficult than with the mask.

Be subtle and with a little care and thought you will create a nicely balanced sepia tone and delicately coloured image. After flattening your image you could complete the nostalgic look by adding an edge effect from the many software packages available for Photoshop.