Learner

Whats the best way to add a Sepia affect to an image

Bacardi

Use the Channel Mixer to get a very good monochrome (or use the L channel of LAB mode)
Then switch to greyscale, then to duotone and pick your colours.
Finally set back to RGB. (or it should be for offset printing)

Learner

thanks

Dodo

Super, you can also have a look at a tutorial here:
http://www.pegaweb.com/tutorials/sun...sunlight-1.htm

I couldn't quite achieve exactly the same effect, but it could be a useful technique.

Welles

Erik

I wondered what is wrong with just using the Hue/Saturation image adjustment, checking colorize and manipulating the sliders until pleasing. (I'll admit to preferring the Channel Mixer for grayscale but that's another issue.)

retired_paddza

Really depends on what you intend to do with the image in the long run. You can get a quick sepia from hue/sat just like you could get a quick grayscale from hue/sat. My understanding of hue/sat / desat is that it bases it's values on the composite channel of the document, which would generally give you a muddy, flat image. So in general it's best to directly attack the channels (channel mixer) or separate the luminocity channel from the mix (Lab color). This will usually give you a much more dynamic image and have more "pop" in the final result. If you're just making a small pic for web or you're going to ghost the image anyway, there's a good chance that a hue/sat will do the job just fine. If you want to make prints, probably it's best to use another method.

It's all about output and intent.

Welles

Good answer, MindBender. That makes sense...seeing as how I prefer the Channel Mixer for grayscale changes. I guess I was just whining about how come I can't be lazy.

Bacardi

I am someone who loves as many options as possible, and duotone offers a lot of them. It's the one I tend to recommend as it's the more official, and people learn most from making things not too automatic.

Another method I love (this one I found myself, one of my first home-made tricks) is:

-Open the pic in RGB
-Add a ChannelMixer adjustment layer
-Add a third layer, filled with 128,128,128 (most neutral of them all) and set this layer to color blend mode

Now use ColorBalance to change this medium grey into what you fancy. The CMAdj Layer gives you the option to play with the balnce of the lights/darks and you have a mask at your disposal.

Setting the ColorBalance to 30 Red, 10Green and -30Yellow gives a good start.

Needless to add that you can start playing with clouds etc etc etc on the top layer, and there we go again...