Split-toning Effect: A Photo Editing Tutorial

This is one of my favorite effects because it is simple and creates a neat effect.

Step One: Choosing your photo.

My recommendation is to choose a photo of something with nature in it.  Perhaps a picture of a beach or ocean.  Also, a photograph that is not too dark.  However, if it is too dark you can always change the light values.

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(All photos and snippets by the author.)

Step Two: Duplicate the layer.

Go to the layers dialogue box and click the duplicate button.  The duplicate button is the one that looks like one layer on top of a another. 

Step Three: Make a black and white copy.

Make sure you are on the top layer.  Go to Colors>Desaturate>Lightness.

You will get something that looks like this:

Step Four: Blue

Create a new layer (button found in the layers dialogue box near the duplicate button).  Fill the layer with the blue color with “2bc6ff”.

Then, set the layer mode to overlay.

Next, Merge the two layers.  To do so, right click on the blue layer and select merge down.

The color should look something like this now:

Step Five: Orange

Duplicate the background image again, and move it to the top.  Then, once again go to color>desaturate>lightness.

Afterwards, create another new layer.  This time you will use the orange color “ffc600″. 

Set to overlay once again, and then Merge down with the layer below. 

Now, you should have color that looks like this:

Step Six: Start the Split-Toning process.

Right click on the orange layer and select add layer mask.  once the dialogue box comes up, select gray-scale copy of layer.

You should get some highlights that look a bit yellow. 

Step Seven: Continuing the Split-Toning process.

Now right click on the blue layer and go to add layer mask again.  Choose the gray-scale mode, but this time make sure the invert box is checked.

You should have something like this:

Step Eight: Final Touches

Select the orange layer and turn the opacity down to 75.  This will let the blue shades shine through a bit more.  If you rather more orange you can skip this step. This step is absolutely optional as it may not work for all pictures.

Finally, merge all the layers and save your work!  To merge all layers, right click on the top layer and select merge all visible layers. 

Final effect:

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and if you give it a try I would love to see your creations!