This tutorial will show you how to transform a standard color photo into a mix of colors, black and white and sepia in a fast and easy process.
Start with your original and add an adjustment layer of channel mixer.
Layer —> New adjustment layer —> Channel mixer.
Choose ‘monochrome’ and play with the sliders until you are happy with the black and white version.This gives you more options than a plain desaturation with CRTL+SHIFT+U .For portraits I personally like the blue channel most quite often.I let the total set to 100.
Change the ‘opacity’ of this layer to 50 %.You can re-adjust to personal taste later.
Now come the sepia tones.
go to Layer —> New adjustment layer —> Hue/Saturation.
check ‘Colorize’ and add your wished sepia values.I tend to use 30 Hue and 20 Saturation as values.
Adjust the opacity of this layer to 50 percent as well or adjust to personal state later when you have the final overview.
Now duplicate this sepia layer ( CTRL + J or Layer —> Duplicate Layer ) and set the blending mode to Soft Light to add more tone and get more contrast.Set the layer’s opacity and fill both to 50 % or adjust to personal taste.
For the final contrast, add a ‘curves’ layer, it will give more control than a ‘contrast’ layer.
go to Layer –> New adjustment layer —> curves
I add a little s-curve with three points.
Which gives a final result of :
compared to the original :
[ --> Download the small .psd with layers version here <-- ]
Other example :
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