Solid Color Layer Toning


Use the Solid Color Layer to tone your photograph.
Steps in Photoshop:
  1. Select Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color...
  2. Select a color
  3. Set blend mode to Soft Light

Here's the example photograph toned using a light brown shade (159, 122, 42).

This method applies the solid color evenly over your image. A variation of the Solid Color method is using a mask to selectively tone your image.

  1. Select to topmost layer
  2. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E (Command-Option-Shift-E) to create a merged layer
  3. Hit Ctrl-Alt-~ (Command-Option-~) to select highlights
  4. Hit Ctrl-Shift-I (Command-Option-I) to select the shadows
  5. Select Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color...
  6. Select a color
  7. Set blend mode to Color

Here's the result of:

Both images used (159, 122, 42) as the fill color. You can see that the toning in the second photograph looks much deeper. That's because the mask applies the color fill more heavily in the shadows than in the highlights.

This method is similar to the Gorman method in that they both use a shadow mask to add toning to the image.

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