Part 9 :- Image Toning For Black And White Images.

There are several ways to do this and there are many 'actions' available to do it for you. This is one way, in which you can use an almost unlimited colour pallette, and keep excellent tonal control over the outcome.

The original image.

I will start with a color image to which I have made a few slight levels adjustments.

Step 1 - Select Desaturate to desaturate the image.

It is usually best to make any levels adjustments before desaturating.

Please note : This section is concerned with toning a black and white image. I am using Desaturate here as an example conversion method only. There are dozens of ways to convert an image to black and white and this is covered in more detail in the section "Part 5 - Converting colour images to black and white"

Step 2 - Once desaturated, the image will look like this and I will now make a New Fill Layer/Solid Color.

Step 3 - As the New Layer dialogue opens, select Mode : Soft Light.

Step 4 - Next, set the Opacity slider to 50% and click OK.

Step 5 - The next dialogue box which appears will be the Color Picker.

Note that the image has gone lighter. This is due to my foreground colour selection being near white. It will have no bearing on the final image as we are about to select a new colour.

Step 6 - Next, I select the colour I wish to tone the image. The colour will now blend over the original at the opacity we set - 50%.

You can select any colour you wish from the 'millions' available. I am choosing to use the Color Libraries and, in this instance, the Trumatch library. I have selected Trumatch 49-a.

Step 7 - Select a second colour. I am going to take another step and place another (second) colour over the top of the image. For this, I follow the same steps and select New Fill Layer/Solid Colour.

Step 8 - Again, once the next dialogue box opens, I select Mode : Soft Light and Opacity 50% and click OK.

Step 9 - The next dialogue box which opens will enable the colour selection.

You can select any colour you wish from the 'millions' available. I am choosing to use the Color Libraries and, in this instance, the Trumatch library. I have selected Trumatch 8-a.

Step 10 - Next, I open the Layers window. I now have two layers which are both 'blending' at 50% over my original image. This is the time to fine tune a little.

There are now two layers and it is easy to select the Layer (click on it) to make any adjustment to the opacity settings. Experiment a little here to get the desired effect.

That's it. You can now resize, save and print.

Comparison image of the original and the finished images.

Original reversed for comparison purposes.

I also took one last step and used Hue/Saturation to desaturate my colours very slightly.

Pretty much that is it. I hope you find it beneficial.

Remember, do NOT save over your original file. Use 'Save As'.

There are hundreds of ways to post process. This is just one technique and I find it works well for many images.

Try it out and have fun. Be sure to try different values in the steps as this will provide you with a wealth of 'self-learned' views of how the values affect the outcome.

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