Tuesday Tip of the Day

This is for all you Photoshop lovers. This tip is pretty simple. If you are familiar with Photoshop you know there are often times many ways to accomplish one task. I am going to show you a quick way to make a toned image from a color image. I like this one because it is very flexible in terms of what you can do with it. We did this in my digital class last week and me students seemed happy with it. It is also great to set up as an action! Here we go:Step One: Choose a color image you wish to tone and open it in Photoshop. The image I will work with is one of my niece.She is so much fun to photograph! Step Two: Make it Black and White. You can use a gradient map adjustment layer for this or you can use a channel mixer adjustment layer. I am going to use a channel mixer adjustment layer. (Just don’t use Image>Mode>Grayscale – we want to stay in RGB mode). Go to the bottom of the layers palette and click on the adjustment layer icon (looks like a half white, half black circle) and choose Channel Mixer. This will open the Channel Mixer dialog box. Check on “Monochrome” and enter 60 for red and 40 for green. You can adjust the RGB sliders until you get something you are happy with as long as the numbers add up to 100. When you are satisfied with your result, then click ok.Here is the black and white conversion I got with the channel mixer: Step Three: Select the background layer, then click on the foreground color in the tool box to choose which color you would like to tone with. Let’s try a warm toned  image. So for this image I entered 124 for R, 105 for G and 60 for B. Then click okay to exit the color picker. Step Four: Once you have chosen your color (color to tone for foreground and make sure white is your background color), then click on the adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the screen and choose Gradient Map.  Then click OK to accept the Gradient Map Adjustment.  It will look very flat, but don’t worry it will look  a lot better soon.Step Five: Drag the new Gradient Map Adjustment Layer to the top, above the Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer. Now you can see the color, but it still looks flat. Here is what I have:Step Six: Change the blend mode (on the layers palette) to Soft Light, now you should have a nice warm toned image – very soft. If it is too saturated you can lower the opacity of the Gradient Map adjustment layer to lessen the tone. Here is what I have: Optional Steps:If you want to bring subtle color back in, drop the opacity of the Channel Mixer adjustment layer. If you drop it down all the way or discard it, you will be left with a more saturated version of your image. I often use the gradient map adjustment without the Channel Mixer to give my color images a pop in color….the end.