Black and white photography made easy: tips for pro-quality results from start to finish

crutter | B&W | Photography Tips | 05/11/2012 02:00am

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Toning techniques for black and white photography

Adding a little colour to black-and-white images goes back to the days of the traditional darkroom. It was often used to make chemical prints more resistant to fading, but also as a way of making black-and-white images appear more striking. In the digital darkroom the decision whether to tone your images or not is purely a question of taste.

Add a single colour
There are many ways to add a single tone or to colour your black-and-white photography in Photoshop. One of the simplest ways is to create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Tick the Colorize box and then adjust the Hue slider to select the colour of the tone. Move the Saturation slider to change the colour’s intensity.

Try Split-toning

1 Create a Gradient Map
Go to Create New Adjustment Layer and choose Gradient Map. Click on the gradient in the adjustment window. In the Gradient Editor window, select the Violet, Orange option from the available presets and click OK.

2 Adjust the intensity 
The image looks psychedelic at this point, so you need to tone it down. Choose the Overlay Blending Mode from the drop-down at the top of the Layers palette. Then you can reduce the opacity – try 50% to start with.

PAGE 1: How to compose for black and white photography
PAGE 2: Good subjects for black and white photography
PAGE 3: Try using in-camera filters for your black and white photography
PAGE 4: Shooting images you can easily convert to black and white
PAGE 5: Black and white conversion in Photoshop Elements
PAGE 6: Black and white conversion in Photoshop CS
PAGE 7: Master Photoshop Levels and Curves
PAGE 8: Using the Levels sliders
PAGE 9: Master the Dodge and Burn tools
PAGE 10: Toning techniques for black and white photography