Photoshop CS 3 Tutorial: How to Split Tone a Photo in 30 Seconds or Less

What is Split Toning?

Split toning is a technique that originated in the black and white darkroom. A traditional printer split tones by using two toners one after the other, one to tone the print’s shadows and the other to tone the highlights.

Photoshop CS does away with the messy chemicals and lets you tone prints with just a few clicks of the mouse. In this tutorial I’m going to show you an easy way to split tone using Gradient Map.

First, you need to start with a black &white photo. I’m not going to discuss colour to black & white conversion in this tutorial simply because there are several ways to do it, each with its own advantages, and I’m sure that many of you already have your favourite technique.

(The quick way, for beginners, is Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation and then move the Saturation slider all the way to left and click OK).

Silk Purses & Pigs’ Ears

I’d like to encourage you to try this technique with your best black & white photos. Split toning is a great technique for bringing the best out of your most amazing work. It’s not a good technique for improving bad photos.

The Split Toning Technique

For this tutorial I’m going to assume that you’re already familiar with basic Photoshop techniques of changing the foreground and background colours, creating new adjustment layers and changing layer blending modes. If these are new to you, scroll down to the bottom of the tutorial where I’ll describe how to do these things.

Choose Your Colours

The first step is to choose your two toning colours. You do this by setting the foreground and background colour swatches at the bottom of the toolbox. The foreground colour becomes the shadows in the photo, and the background colour becomes the highlights. For my first example I chose a chocolate brown for the foreground/shadows (63441C) and cream for the background/highlights (FFF5D8). I recommend you start with these and experiment with your own colours once you’ve got the hang of it.

Create a Gradient Map Layer

Now we’re going to create a Gradient Map layer using the two colours you’ve just selected. Bring up the Layers Palette and create a new adjustment layer, choosing Gradient Map from the list of options. A new window appears showing a graduated bar with the foreground and background colours you chose.

Click ‘OK’ and, if you used the two colours I listed above, the photo will look something like this:

Change the Blending Mode

Now change the layer blending mode from ‘Normal’ to ‘Color’:

Adjust Opacity

The strength of the effect can be adjusted to taste by using the Opacity or Fill sliders (it doesn’t matter which):

More Colour Combinations

Try these colour combinations or experiment with your own:

Foreground:       Muted Brown (45392B)

Background:       White (FFFFFF)

Foreground:       Midnight Blue (2A4469)

Background:       White (A9C6C6)

Foreground:       Dusky Blue (4A616F)

Background:       Muted Orange (E6CFAA)

What’s a Gradient Map?

The Gradient Map command creates a greyscale image that uses the foreground colour for the shadows and the background colour for the highlights. When you create a Gradient Map adjustment layer, click the small black arrow to the immediate right of the graduated bar for more colour options. You can play around with the different colour combinations to see the effect.

Change Foreground and Background Colours in Photoshop CS

Left-click on either the foreground or background colour swatch at the bottom of the toolbox. The Color Picker window will appear and you can choose a new colour from the colour square or type the hexadecimal value of the colour in the highlighted box at the bottom.

Create a New Adjustment Layer in Photoshop CS

Use ‘F7′ or Window -> Layers to bring up the Layer Palette. Create a new adjustment layer by clicking on the half black half white circle at the bottom of the palette or by Layer -> New Adjustment Layer then choose the type of the layer you want to create.

Change the Layer Blending Mode & Adjust Layer Opacity in Photoshop CS

The highlighted areas on the picture show you where to change the layer blending mode and layer fill and the locations of the ‘Create new fill or adjustment layer’ button and the foreground & background colour swatches.

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Fine Art Photographer Spotlight: Joseph Szymanski

This is the first of a new series where I’ll be taking a quick look at the work of a fine art or travel photographer whose work’s caught my eye.

Detroit born Joseph Szymanski moved to San Francisco to study photography and never moved away. After graduating he became disillusioned with working as a freelance photographer in the digital age, picked up his old Leica film cameras and some Kodak Tri-X 400 and returned to the darkroom to create more artistic photographs.

The result is a series of gritty black and white photographs taken in and around San Francisco.

Szymanski sells his most popular hand printed photographs on his website, www.josephszymanski.com, both individually and in sets of three to six. Some of his images are also available through Imagekind and RedBubble.

All photos copyright Joseph Szymanski. Please ask the photographer for permission to use in any way.

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In August 2004 I spent a few days in a charming, remote village called Iruya in northwest Argentina. Imagine my surprise when I recognised the town in Guiness’ latest TV ad. A quick search on google confirmed that the location was indeed Iruya, that the ad is Guiness’ most expensive to date, and that the entire campaign cost a colossal ten million pounds (approximately 20 million US dollars).

The ‘making of’ video (see below) reveals that the makers of the ad spent a month in Iruya, 150 crew were there for two weeks and that they bought in 130 extras from 5 neigbouring villages. This is in a town with a population of only 1000 people.

The ad agency (AMV/BBDO) that made the video are from the UK. They used a Dutch company called Domino Domain to create the domino tipping sequence. Iruya’s a long way from Europe, fairly obviously, and to get to there you first need to fly to the Andean city of Salta (approx. 14 hours) , then take a bus to the town of Humahuaca (approx. 5 hours) then finally another bus to Iruya, which is 48km away on a narrow dirt track (approx. 3 hours - it’s hard going).

Then there’s the altitude. Humahuaca is 3000 metres above sea level, Iruya is a little lower at 2780 metres, and the road in between at one point reaches 4000 metres. That means that the people in Iruya are nearly three kilometres or two miles up in the air. There’s planes that don’t go that high, I’m sure, and trust me, until you acclimatise, it’s hard to breathe.

Not only did they have to get all the people involved in the project to Iruya, but all the equipment too. This included all the camera and filming equipment, 10 000 books, 7000 dominoes, 400 tyres, 50 fridges, 70 wardrobes and six cars. For this they needed 26 trucks.

So, after spending 10 million pounds and making all that effort, was it worth it? Take a look at the video and decide for yourself:

And this is the ‘making of’ video:

Now, in one way I’m kind of sad to see the ad because one of the wonderful things about visiting Iruya for me is that it’s such a remote and magical place. I hope it stays that way.

Here are some of the black and white photos that I took when I stayed in the village. Incidentally, the room that I stayed in cost me only 7 argentine pesos a night. That’s a little over one pound or two dollars.

And someone spent 10 million pounds making an ad for Guiness there? I don’t know about you but I think that’s a little crazy.

Photo Essay: Iruya, Provincia de Salta, northwest Argentina

This is how Iruya looks when you approach it along the dirt road from Humahuaca.

This print can be purchased from Imagekind.

The village’s main plaza.

Photos from the village.

I took these photos on a the edge of the village in the late evening. The dirt track leads to the next village, San Isidro, some 5 kilometres away. It’s only accessible by 4WD or by walking. In the summer, which is the wet season here, the road is impassable for vehicles and supplies are taken to the village by donkey.

I met these children while walking outside the village.

Kids playing football on a dusty field. No grass here.

The village’s cemetery.

The day I arrived in Iruya coincided with a local festival. I’m not sure exactly what the purpose of it all was but I know that the fiestas in this region date back to before European settlement. The people in these villages are descended from the indigenous peoples that lived here before the Spanish came. Their festivals typically are a combination of pre-colombian and catholic elements.

All these photos are Copyright © Andrew Gibson and are available for use under Rights Managed licenses. Please contact me for further information.

JPG Magazine

Did you know that there is an online photography magazine where anyone can upload their photos and photo essays and post their profiles?

JPGmag.com is a photo sharing site for photographers with a difference. Members upload photos and articles which are voted on by other members. The best of the best are published in a (real) magazine and the authors paid $US100 and given a free subscription. The magazine is available for download in PDF format and can also be purchased in print form.

The standard of the photography in the published magazine is inspirationally high. That’s not surprising, consider the following statistics for JPG Magazine Issue 10: 10,743 photos submitted by 6,771 people, 1,057,974 votes cast by 21,024 people in 147 countries.

Membership is free, and members can submit articles, photos and photo essays. Single photos can be submitted to themes; recent themes include ‘America’, ‘Dreamscapes’, ‘Are You Ready to Rock’ and ‘Fashion’.

The site is easy to use and navigate with a modern design fitting a cutting edge photography magazine. Visitors can view photos, photo essays, articles, stories and contributor profiles. Photos can be voted in or out of the next edition of the magazine.

I’ve just posted my first photo essay to the JPG Magazine website:

Angels, Tombs & Virgins in Recoleta

Every time that I travel to Argentina I like to visit the magnificent, flamboyant and elitist Cementerio de Recoleta (Recoleta Cemetery) in Buenos Aires.

Why is Recoleta so special? It’s a burial ground for the most influential and powerful politicians, artists, scientists, sportsmen and financiers of Buenos Aires, and military heroes who helped in the struggle for Argentina’s independence. It’s expensive. They say it’s cheaper to live the good life in Buenos Aires than to be buried in Recoleta. It’s also exclusive. So exclusive that Evita Peron is buried there and her husband General Juan Peron, one of Argentina’s most famous presidents, isn’t. Carlos Gardel, Argentina’s most famous tango singer, didn’t make it to Recoleta either (both are buried in the cemetery of Chacarita).

The necropolis is a mini city within a city, with giant mausoleums built along avenues like houses in a street. The mausoleums are amazing creations built from granite and marble. Each one is different, some fairly simple and others lavish and ornate and built in a wide variety of styles including Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Neoclassical, Secessionist, Neo-Byzantine and Neo-Babylonian.

Many of the mausoleums are decorated with statues and crosses, and there are countless statues of angels and the Virgin Mary. Some of the statues are bigger than a person. Others are mounted on top of the mausoleums, pointing at or staring towards the sky.

There’s also something special about the location of Recoleta Cemetery. It’s built in the heart of Recoleta, one the more expensive and exclusive neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. It’s enclosed by high brick walls, above which from outside it’s possible to see the tops of the mausoleums and statues. There’s a large and busy handicrafts market on the green lawns outside the cemetery at weekends, sometimes with live music. There are restaurants and bars and shops full of designer clothes and furniture nearby. The Basi­lica Nuestra Senora del Pilar, a large and beautiful gleaming white church (one of the few remaining colonial buildings in the capital) is right next door to the cemetery’s gates.

Of course, the real reason that I love the cemetery is for photography. Coincidentally, every time that I’ve been has been in winter, and the low light and cold air just adds to the slightly surreal atmosphere. Every time that I go I see something new to photograph and new ways of taking photos. The statues, mausoleums and crosses are great for black and white photography. I like to look for tonal contrasts and textures on the surfaces of the mausoleums and statues. I also like to photograph the statues and crosses semi-silhouetted against the bright sky. If I still used a darkroom (rather than Photoshop and a computer) I would print the photos using the lith process. I try to emulate the look by boosting the contrast and giving the photos a sepia tone.

You can also read it (and see more photos) here:

Angels, Tombs & Virgins in Recoleta