Normally we try to get the best out of a photo by editing but from time to time it can be funny to do the opposite. Let's give a photo a really old look I use Gimp but any photo program which supports layers will do it.

We open a suited photo

This existed already in 1880 and with the lamp converted to gas nobody would see the difference..

Next we open a texture. There are millions of free textures in the net. They are just photos of structures like paper, wood, walls, textile materials without a real motif. As i want an end result with an old photo look i choose something like an old paper

Gimp has the neat feature to be able to open a photo as a new layer in an open photo.

Not open but 'Open as layer' Ctrl+Alt+O. When you use a program which does not have this feature you have to open the texture as a second photo, select all, copy it Ctrl+C, change to the first photo and insert it on a new empty layer Ctrl+V.

The result now should look like this

Most the times the texture will have another resolution than the photo we want to work on. We just go to the texture layer and transform it Ctrl+T so that it fits the size of the photo. (We could have re-sized it first but this is more complicated.)

Colour photography was invented around 1860 but when we think about old photo we think of B/W or Sepia. The Sepia effect for this job comes from the texture but we have to take the colour information out of the photo.

So we close the texture layer and work on the photo layer. I just desaturated it because the end result shall be a low quality look anyway so i did not invest time in the conversion to B/W. For this photo i had to take out a bit of contrast as well but the important point is the change to B/W.

Now comes the trick - we activate the texture layer again and change the mode and opacity. Best you just go through all the modes and check which one produces the most interesting result and than you adjust the opacity of the texture layer. For this photo it was 'Fibre Mix' and ~80%. No idea what the mode 'Fibre Mix' does exactly but the result looks like an old photo already.

Most old photos do have a vignette because the lenses where not very powerful in the edges. There are lots of tools which can do it but i will show you the old-style which delivers nice results.

We open a new transparent layer on top of the texture. We start the gradient tool. In Gimp just press L.

Important - set the gradient type to 'from foreground colour to transparancy' and the foreground colour to black.

Now we drag nice gradients from the outside into the photo on the new empty layer from all 4 sides. Don't be too careful! Some small changes from side to side look natural! If you want a real old fashioned effect you set the opacity for the gradient to 60%-80% and use two layers for the vignette.

The result should look like this

I have overdone it a bit but this was to show the general idea of what can be done with simple means

An alternative, less extreme version is in my gallery

http://www.myfinepix.pl/gallery/125333/401772