Digital sepia toning

The natural first step, if you're thinking in the old darkroom way, would be to convert the photograph to black & white and then add a brown colour, but digitally you need to convert back to colour before adding a tone. If you use Photoshop you could convert to duotone rather than colour, which allows very subtle changes to hue and comes with some pre saved sepia tones. Alternatively you can reduce the saturation of a colour image without going to all the trouble of converting, and this can even be down with more basic programs. Photoshop Elements image editing software has been used to create this effect, but most other programs have similar options, so the same effect can be achieved with ease.

1 Open the picture and select Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation. InPaintShopPro7you'llfindthisunder Colour>Adjust>Hue/Saturation/Lightness (Shift+H) and with PicturePublisher10 it'sMap>Hue Shift (Ctrl+U).

2 A dialogue box appears with several sliding controls to adjust hue, saturation and lightness. The hue control changes the colour saturation the depth and vividness of colour and lightness is the brightness of the colour. There's also a colorize box that you could now click to turn it on. You'll notice the photo goes mono-coloured, which may be blue or red, but at this stage it's unlikely to be sepia.

4 Now adjust the saturation slider so that the colours go from being vivid to almost greyscale. The less you move this, the deeper the sepia tone.

6 When you are happy with the tone click okay and save the picture.

 

Tip
In Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro you have access to Adjustment Layers where the hue and saturation can be controlled on an independent layer. This means the picture will change, but can still be edited while ever the layer is separate. The effect only becomes permanent when you save the picture and flatten the layers.