This is a post processing recipe about spilt toning. I have found the technique useful in various scenarios in both color and b&w photographs. We will get to the technique in a minute but first let me explain what split toning is.
I use Adobe Lightroom 4
What is Split-Toning
To understand split toning, let us understand toning first. After making a black and white print, photographers used to tone the print with various toners. Selenium & Sepia are two of the most well known toners. Non toxic toners like coffee & tea are also quite popular in the black and white printing community. These toners, basically give a tint to the entire print. However, it is natural that the tint is most visible in the highlights. Tweaking the intensity of the toner and the duration for which the print is toned, increases or decreases the effect of the toner.
After using simple toning for a while, photographers started playing with multiple toners. They found that they could use different types of material to hide parts of the print such that it doesn’t get toned. At the same time toners were enhanced to work specifically with either highlights OR shadows. This gave rise to split-toning where two toners were used. One for the highlights and another one for the shadows.
How to?
Toning photographs is very easy in digital post processing software. Lightroom has a split-toning section that will let you select a colors & their saturation for highlights and lowlights respectively. But while the mechanics of toning are easy, it takes significant thought to decide which photographs to tone and with which colors.
Technique
One of my primary considerations while split toning (or generally post-processing) is to make sure I communicate my feeling about a photograph through its presentation.
- Choose a color for highlight tone
The highlight tone color is more apparent and gives overall mood to the photograph. I choose a warm OR cool color depending on what mood I want to evoke. - Set the highlight tone saturation to taste
- Choose a color for shadow tone
The shadows are usually an opposite color as the one chosen for the highlights. So if you’ve chosen a warm tone for highlights choose a cool color for shadows. - Adjust saturation to taste
- Adjust balance between the highlight and shadow tone dominance.
Tips
- Choose the same color for highlights and shadows to create a single tone photograph. For example a simple sepia tone.
You can still play with the highlights and shadow saturations separately - Toning shadows can create an apparent loss of contrast so you may want to adjust contrast / clarity after you’ve toned your photograph.
- Try (split-)toning both color and b&w photographs.
- Checkout the split-toning preset that I posted a few months back. I’ve been using it for bright sunny days and love the effect.
