Split toning. I love it. What exactly is split toning you might ask? Well it has to do with adjusting/adding colors in the highlights and shadows of your image to add a really unique looking finish to your photos. Depending on the colors that you apply, and the strengths that you apply them with, split toning can be used to create really neat vintage looking photos, or used to enhance the mood of an image.

Let me give you an example:

This above photo is the resulting image after I had done all of my normal adjustments in Lightroom. I really liked the image but I wanted it to have a little bit of bit more of a brisk, cloudy fall day feel, so that the viewer could sense how cold it actually was out there that day and make the blanket seem very cozy. Also, I didn’t want so much black in the shadow regions like on Grace’s jeans and on the sweater. This is where split toning comes in handy.

Here I applied a cool, dark blue color to the shadows. In the highlights, I added a warmer orange color to offset the blue and preserve a natural looking skin tone.

Now lets move on to how you can apply this affect to your photos. I’ll the explain the method for both Lightroom and Photoshop Elements/Photoshop.

In Lightroom:

In the Develop module, scroll down to the “Split Toning” tab and from here you can use the sliders to adjust the hues of color that you wish to add to both the shadows and the highlights as well as their respective saturations. Be really careful not to go overboard with the saturation sliders or the image can start to look really wacky. I tend to stick with cooler colors for the shadows and pick the opposite {warmer} color to apply to the highlights. After picking your colors, reduce the shadows just a tiny bit.

In Photoshop Elements/Photoshop:

Luckily the methods of split toning in both Elements and Photoshop are identical, so the steps are the exact same in both. To begin, click on the “Create New Adjustment Layer” {I’ve circled this button in red in the image below} and select “Gradient Map” from the drop down menu that appears.

Once the Gradient Map menu pops up, double-click the gradient bar and the menu seen in the image below will appear. If you double-click the tab that is circled on the left side of the menu, you’ll be able to adjust the color that will be applied to the shadow regions of your image. By double-clicking on the circled tab on the right of the menu, you can select the color that will be applied to the highlight regions. Once you’ve got the colors that you like, click “OK”.

Below is the example of what you’ll see once you’ve applied the Gradient Map to your photo. You’ll notice that the blue color that I’ve selected has been applied to the darker regions {the shadows} of the image, while the orange has been to the lighter areas {the highlights}. You’re right in thinking that this looks awful at this stage because you can’t see any of the original colors but we’ll correct this in the next step.

Next, select the blend mode and change it from “Normal” to “Screen”. You’ll notice the original colors to come back through in the image. The effect might still be a bit overpowering so often times I decrease the “Opacity” slider to achieve a more natural and subtle look.

That’s it! I hope you can put this effect to good effect with your photos. It’s not something I do to all of Grace’s outfit photos, but every once in a while it really can make them pop. Like I said, it works really well when you want to enhance the mood of a particular photo, as in the ones with the blanket like I did above.