3.3. Cartes de visite

Postcard-sized cartes de visite depicted the personalities of the day and were popular collectibles in the mid-19th century. One of the most celebrated collections belonged to John Hay, President Abraham Lincoln's personal secretary. Hay knew cartes de visite photographers such as Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner, who held stocks of autographed cartes, and like many collectors, he sent cartes to subjects with requests that they be returned with signatures.

There are two main steps to creating a Photoshop carte de visite. First, make a template for your standard carte. It could have a decorative border, and, for added authenticity, some printed text to advertise your "studio." Secondly, add the photograph as a vignette and include a handwritten signature, and then finish it with some sepia toning and any other details specific to the subject. This isn't at all difficult to master, and you can easily produce a collection of cartes featuring friends or family members.

When you're applying aging effects to an image, it always helps if the picture has a suitably "vintage" look to begin with. Battle reconstructions and other historical reenactments can be a useful source of such material.

Create a new document. Set the resolution to 300ppi and enter the sizetypically, cartes were around 2 x 4in (5 x 10cm). Set Background Contents to White. Use the Marquee tool to select a rectangle close to the edge of the image, and use Edit > Stroke to add a 5-pixel black line. Making sure you still have the selection's marching ants visible, contract it a little and add another, thinner line. Use Select > Modify > Contract and enter 10, then add another 2-pixel black line with Edit > Stroke. Next, add some printed text near the base of the image. Activate the Text tool, choose a font that has an authentic period "feel," and add your name and a city19th-century photographers often used cartes to promote their studios. This completes the standard carte. Save the file before you proceed. Open the file with the subject's photograph, desaturate it with Image > Adjustments > Desaturate, and then drag the image layer into the carte de visite window. If it's too big, use Edit > Transform to resize and position it, holding down the Shift key as you drag the corner handles only. Don't fill the framecartes often used relatively small images. When you're done, hit the Enter key or doubleclick the transformation box. Use the Elliptical Marquee tool to select the area you want to show in the vignette window. When you are satisfied, click the "Add layer mask" icon in the Layers palette. To create the vignette's soft edge, click on the right, monochrome thumbnail in the Layers palette to make sure that the mask icon is active, rather than the photo icon, so the mask can be blurred. Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and drag the slider until the picture's edge is soft, and click OK. Vignettes were originally created by hand, which you can do, too, using a soft brush to paint on the maskwhite reveals the image, black hides it. Many cartes de visites were autographed or annotated by hand. To mimic this, write your text in a dark color on plain white paper, scan it with a flatbed scanner, and open the image in Photoshop. Click on the new file to make it active, but ensure you can still see the carte's window. Drag the new file from the Layers palette and drop it into the carte imageit will become a new layer. Resize as necessary, then change the layer's blending mode to Darken. If necessary, use Image > Adjustments > Levels to convert the writing to pure black and white. Do this by dragging the shadows and highlights sliders in from either end, around the spike representing the text. Finally, you need to adjust the colors so that they have a faded, sepia tone. Add a new layer and change its blending mode to Multiply. Then set the foreground color to a sepia (try RGB values of 214, 203, 187), and fill the layer with color using Edit > Fill. You can also vary the layer's opacity if you want to moderate the tone. Cartes de visites were popular collectibles in the mid-19th century and were often displayed in albums. I deliberately left some printed text visible, and placed one image slightly off-center. Cartes de visites often feature the photographer's studio details, autographs, and other handwritten notes.