Breathtaking Split Toning Effect

This dramatic effect is an ideal alternative to black and white. Instead of being pure black and white, split toning creates a multicolor toning effect where the shadows and highlights are of two different colors. This effect, which was a popular film developing method, can now be done digitally in minutes. Find out how to make your photos look breathtaking with this classic split toning effect.

Sample PSD (Photoshop Document)

Most websites charge several dollars to download a sample Photoshop file. We offer it free to everyone. This is possible because we are an ad supported website - we show a few ads so you don’t have to pay.

• Split Toning

Before you begin

The split toning effect can be done much faster with the latest version of ACR (Adobe Camera RAW), Adobe Lightroom, and possibly Apple Aperture - please confirm this with me in the comments if you know.This Photoshop tutorial is meant as a solution in case you do not have any of those options. For example, editing a JPEG file with Photoshop.

Split Toning Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

As usual, begin by opening a photo into Photoshop. If this is your first time following this tutorial, use a close up portrait photo. This split toning Photoshop effect works well with portraits but not very well with landscapes.

Step 2

First, if you didn’t open a black and white photo, you need to convert the image to black and white. There are many ways of doing this but the easiest method with Photoshop CS3 is to add a Black & White adjustment layer. If you’re using an older version of Photoshop, you can also use:

• Hue/Saturation
  This method is for beginners. Simply set the saturation to -100 and click OK. If you want to be more precise, you can also go into each color and adjust the brightness.
• Channel Mixer
  This method is for the more advance Photoshop user who understands how to use the Channel Mixer to create a black and white photo.

In the layers palette, click on the new adjustment layer button and select the method you want to use to convert your photo to black and white.

I’m using Photoshop CS3 so I chose to use the Black & White tool to make my color photo black and white. Here, I adjusted the settings to create the best tonal information. There isn’t one setting that will work with every photo - you’ll have to adjust the settings yourself.

More pages: 1 2 3

Written by admin on February 14th, 2008 with 11 comments.
Read more articles on Color and Photo Retouching and Photoshop Tutorials.

• [+] Digg: Feature this article
• [+] Del.icio.us: Bookmark this article
• [+] Furl: Bookmark this article

Related articles

• LOMO (March 7th, 2008)
• The Best Technique to Enhance Saturation (February 29th, 2008)