In the linked article at "Cup Of Idea" website you will find the tutorial on how to create a nicely looking old image out of a new one. I took a liberty to make some further adjustments to the final result, which I want to share with you.

Here is the layer palette:

My modifications are as follows:

• Add a texture of an old paper as the semi-transparent background (50% opacity)
• Make the image itself brighter by pulling up the upper part of the curve
• Set the blending mode of the image to Multiply
• Add atop an empty layer and use Filter>Render>Clouds
• Blur somewhat the clouds and scale up to make the clouds bigger
• Set the blending mode of the clouds layer to Color Burn

And that's pretty much it, except that I added a layer mask to the image (based on the texture) so the edges are somewhat washed out and bleak.

Note: This beautiful photograph is taken from the tutorial. I hope I am not offending anyone by doing so.

This is another approach of creating an High Dynamic Range (HDR) image - Overlaying Two Exposures. Sometimes I use similar techniques. And in this article you can find the detailed explanation of this technique.

In this interesting article Sara Frances describes her approach of taking care of the white balance (even before the exposure) in Photoshop Camera Raw, which could produce great results.

Why doesn’t anybody just tell us that raw has the artistic power of Ansel Adams’ chemical darkroom, his famous Zone System? Raw conversion is digital darkroom for adults—and so much easier!

It seems that most of us (who shoot in Raw) are missing an important procedure in our digital workflow, if do not pay the due attention to the white balance. Read it yourself and see where Sara leads us to.

This is a quick bookmark (at least for me) on creation of great HDR images (or should I still call them photographs?). With this HDR Photography tutorial, where the author leads you step by step, you will find out how using Photomatrix (a standalone program that allows to blend several images of different exposures into one with a greater dynamic range) you can create images that until recently were available only to the human eye, which could adjust its sensitivity to various areas of the scene. You have probably seen such images before, but haven't been able to create yourself.
Note: By the way, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, where the image covers a high contrast scene without loosing details in highlights or shadows (such as photograph of a dark lit room with a window to a bright sunny day. Usually it leads to a lower overall contrast.

This technique comes from ages (if I may call it) of film photography. And it was adapted by the digital photography as well. Now, almost every great photograph was created in one way or another with help of this technique - Dodge and Burn.
And I extend my gratitude to Steve Paxton who explained the right way of applying Dodging and Burning in Photoshop. Even if you know a lot about Photoshop, you don't know everything. And for me it's a real pleasure to learn such new tricks and techniques. Before I was using "destructive" way of applying dodging and burning directly to the image layer, which made me uncomfortable and reluctant of using it at all. But now with help of Steve I can use it in "non-destructive" way without fear. Actually, I love dodging and burning - you can create great effects and increase the impact of your photograph!