Freelance Photographer
Seeing things differently
A taker of Photographs - A creator of images

This tutorial will guide you through the basic steps of converting a colour image into a sepia effect image in Adobe Photoshop CS... This should work in other versions but I don't have these to check them on... I've chosen a low resolution close-up of some flowers as the image for this demonstration... You of course will open your own image to apply these effects...

1... Open your image in Adobe Photoshop...

2... You now need to convert your image to a Grayscale image...

• From the Menu bar click on Image... Select Mode... Click on Grayscale... There are however other ways to convert to Grayscale...

3... Now you need to convert it back to RGB by clicking on Image... Select Mode... Click on RGB Color...This should leave you with a grayscale image in RGB like the middle one on the right...

4... Now for the toning effect...

I've found the best way to control the exact tone effect, is by using the colour balance option... I have found that if I use actions to create the toning I can’t tailor it to suit the image as it always produces the same effect...

Portraits, I find, tend to need only a slight toning effect with a slight reddish hue, whilst urban or industrial scenes benefit form a darker more chocolate tone...

My procedure for doing this is as follows:- Press the Ctrl+J keys together to create a new layer... Click on Image... Select Adjustments and click on Color Balance...

5... From the new window you can adjust the sliders to create the exact tone you require...

I moved the sliders as follows... The top towards RED + 25, the middle towards MAGENTA - 10, the bottom towards YELLOW - 25...

You can of course create other toned effects by the same method using different slider settings, as the example on the right shows...

Each slider was moved to 50 in the direction of each of the 6 available colours, green, red, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow...

The colour variations are practically infinite by adjusting the sliders in different increments...

The easiest way however to convert an image in to a toned image is to press Ctrl+U keys together to bring up the Hue & Sturation window... Tick the Colorize box near the lower right hand corner... Then set the Hue and saturation slideres anywhere between 15 and 30... You can play about with these settings to get some pretty good variations of the sepia efect... This method does not quite give you the total control that the method above does, but it does a mighty fine job all the same...

Happy toning...