| Quick & Easy Sepia-Tone Effect
There are a number of ways to
create a sepia tone effect in Photoshop. This one is my personal
favorite. It uses a twist on a method of B&W conversion. What
I like about this technique is that is is fast and easy and you
have a lot of control over the result.
In my tutorial, "Making
a Fine Art B&W Image," I describe a technique for B&W
conversion that uses a pair of Hue/Saturation adjustment layers.
You can make a sepia tone using exactly the same technique. Let
me show you how it's done!

You start with the image you
want to give a sepia tone. You add a pair of Hue/Saturation adjustment
layers. One on top of the other. You need to change the Blend Mode
for the lower layer from Normal to Color. I recommend changing the
name of this layer to something like "Contrast Layer."
The Blend Mode for the upper layer is left as Normal. I recommend
changing its name to something like "Tone Layer."
For B&W, you would set the
Saturation slider for the "Tone Layer" to -100. For sepia,
you instead adjust all three sliders. Hue = 50, Saturation = -20,
and Lightness = +5.

The result is a sepia tone image.

Adjustments to the "Contrast
Layer" affect the contrast of the image. Pulling the Hue slider
makes quick, wholesale adjustments to contrast. Saturation and Lightness
have smaller effects. The image below resulted from setting the
Saturation slider to -40. (A moderate amount of Highpass filter
sharpening was applied to the image, also.)

IIf you decide you do not want
sepia, you can use the Hue Slider on the "Tone Layer"
to select another tone. Here's the result of Hue = 0.

The newest version of the TLR
Sepia Tint action set (version 1.0c) includes two actions. Apply
Sepia Tint uses the method described here. You can tweak the adjustment
layers after the action completes. Add Noise just adds a bit of
noise to the image to simulate film grain and give the image a more
authentic sepia look.
Click here to download the TLR
Sepia Tint action set
Enjoy!
|