A photographer friend recently taught me her trick for giving photos a nice sepia tone, and I’ve been wanting to try out this technique on some of my wedding photos. When I think sepia, I think soft and romantic, so what better time than Valentine’s for putting this technique to use. Here’s what I did, using Photoshop Elements 3.

    
Before                                            After

1. Open your photo. Go to Enhance>Color>Adjust Hue/Saturation.
2. Click on the Colorize box. Then adjust the Hue slider to the left, making sure not to make the color too red or too yellow (see Figure 1) I adjusted the Hue to 24.  Adjust the Saturation and Lightness as needed. Click OK.

      
Figure 1                                                                              Figure 2

3. Go to Layer>Duplicate Layer. Make sure the new layer is selected and click on the drop-down menu that says Normal. Change it to Soft Light (see figure 2). Adjust the opacity as desired. I did about 50%.
4. You can stop at this point, but I always soften my photos with a little blur. To do so, go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian blur and adjust the pixels just a tad (I did .3). Go to Layer>Flatten Image, save your work and you’re done!

Want more photo tips and tricks? Check out MM magazine editor GinaMarie’s recent post about adding selective color to photos.  Visit the forum’s new photography thread to ask questions and share ideas about photography.  And don’t forget about Paper + Pixels, which teaches all kinds of digital techniques.

Check out the books blog next week for more photo tips and tricks.

Kristin


Original photo courtesy Jennifer Disney Photography