Split Toning | Alex Wise Photography

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Before and After – St Helen’s Self Portrait

This is quite an old photo taken back in December 2010 at one of my favourite places in Tasmania, St Helens. A place I spent a lot of time as a kid and close to the beautiful Bay of Fires. St Helens is a beautiful part of the state and if you’re ever visiting, I’d put it high up in the list of places to go. It has some beautiful waterfalls, seascapes and is just a great little town.

This photograph was edited using just Adobe Lightroom. Occasionally I’ll edit 70% of my image in Lightroom and then do some remaining changes (curves, colour correction and sharpening) in Photoshop but for this image it was all Lightroom. I really love how far Lightroom has come. Originally when it was first released I was reluctant but it has made so much progress in recent years and reduces Photoshop from my workflow less and less as new releases come about. I’m excited by what is yet to come.

Capturing the Image

The photo was captured during the day with a 50 second exposure at F/8 using a Canon 5d Mark II, Canon 17-40, Cokin Z-Pro graduated neutral density filter, B+W 110 ND, tripod and control. In case you’re not familiar with day time long exposures, I’ve got a small post on my blog about daytime long exposures which goes into detail on how it works and the equipment needed. I love the way long exposures can transform a scene by smoothening the water or clouds of a scene.

For this image, I used a neutral density filter and graduated neutral density filter (for the sky) to smoothen the water and clouds to give a minimalist feel.The clouds were quite patchy and thanks to the wind, I was able to use the long exposure to subtly blur them and give them this look.

Post Processing

Split toning settings used for this image

Post processing this image was heavily geared around playing with the split toning feature of Adobe Lightroom to introduce a cold feel to the image. I went into quite a bit of detail in an earlier post about Lightroom’s Split Toning which may be of interest to those not familiar with it. Through using the split toning feature, you are able to introduce a tone to either your shadows or highlights. It’s really handy and I’ll often use it to add a subtle hint of a colour to either my shadows or highlights. Often I’ll add a very subtle yellow/orange to my highlights to give a warmer feel to the image.

Once the split toning was applied, I made some subtle adjustments to curves, boosting the shadows ever slightly, adjusting the saturation and clarity of the image.

And that is how my self portrait at St Helen’s was captured and post processed. I hope this post was useful 🙂

As always If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave a comment or drop an email. Always happy to help or chat 🙂

– Alex

Split toning has become quite popular thanks to Adobe Lightroom making it easy for photographers to experiment and add duo-tone sepia and film effects to their photographs. But split toning isn’t anything new and actually dates back to the late 1800’s. The technique was used by photographers including Ansel Adams to add a colour to either the highlights or shadows to a black and white photograph (as they were at the time). Ansel would occasionally add a very subtle purple to the shadows of his stunning photographs.

Since the days of Ansel Adams using split toning the technique has evolved and we now use it slightly different to in the past. That’s not to say it can’t still be used like it traditionally was but as photography has evolved as have the way techniques are used. Photographers are now using split toning on the shadows and highlights of their images to recreate film effects like cross processing or adding a duo-tone like effect to their image. It’s a feature of Lightroom that I love to tinker with when editing my photographs and I’d been meaning to write a blog post about it for sometime now after making a YouTube tutorial on split toning last year.

What is split toning and how does it work?

Basically split toning involves adding a colour to either the shadows or highlights part of an image. One favourite of mine is adding a yellow to the highlights to give the image a warm feel. While other times I like to add a blue to the shadows to give the image a cold feel. If you’re going for a warm or cold look to your image this can sometimes be achieved by adjusting the temperature of the image. Personally, I prefer the control which split toning provides but you can also adjust the temperature for a similar effect

For photographers using Lightroom the split toning feature can be accessed by opening the Develop tab and located fifth menu down from the right. Once open you will be presented with two different options: Highlights and Shadows. Start by selecting the little box that appears next to Highlights and select the blue box (see below). Now do the same for the Shadows but this time select the yellow looking box.

Selecting a colour to split tone the highlights

From this point I start to gradually change the hues of both the Highlights and Shadows, adjust the saturation of both and slightly play with the balance until at a level I’m happy with. There’s no perfect formula that will work all the time for images so I find the best thing to do is to play until you get the results you desire. If this isn’t making much sense then give my video split toning tutorial I uploaded to YouTube last year a look which explains the process better.

Let’s start to look at some images and the split toning settings that were used to give you an idea of how I’ve used split toning in the past –

IMG_6231-2 — St Kilda Pier with natural colours

stkildasplit — Split toning settings for the above St Kilda Pier photograph

IMG_2444-2 — A wet miserable day with natural colours

A wet miserable day with split toning applied

melbourne1split — Split toning for the above photograph ‘A wet miserable day’

IMG_2192-2 — Car park entrance with natural colours

Car park entrance with split toning applied

melbourne2split — Split toning settings for the above car park entrance photograph

IMG_2986-2 — Self portrait with natural colours

sthelenssplit — Split toning settings for the above self portrait

Adding Split Toning to Black and White Photographs

Another reason I love split toning is the subtle tones you can add to a black and white image. My favourite is adding either a very subtle blue into the highlights to almost give a duo tone feel to the image. For this image I processed as normal and then dropped the saturation completely to make the image black and white then opened the split toning and added a slight blue to the highlights. It’s a neat little trick and something I’ve got into a habit of adding when going for a black and white feel to my images but adding something a little different on top.

IMG_7972-2 — Girl smoking in natural colours

Girl smoking with split toning and decreased saturation applied

smokingsplit — Split toning settings for the above photograph of a girl smoking

Split Toning Lightroom Presets

Or if you’re feeling slightly lazy and would rather all of this to happen at the click of the button then my Lightroom presets might suit you best. The presets (not to be confused with an Australian band…) are heavily split toning based and at this stage offer a duotone/cold effect and a coffee/warm effect for your images. Below gives you an idea of what the two presets offer.

Feel free to click either image to download the preset.

I hope this tutorial on split toning has been useful for you. If it has I’d appreciate you share the love by using one of the share buttons to the side menu on the right.

Feel free to drop an email if you have any questions. Always happy to help 🙂

– Alex

Tag: Split Toning

Before and After – St Helen’s Self Portrait

Before and After – St Helen’s Self Portrait

Capturing the Image

Post Processing

Exploring the Lightroom Split Toning Feature

What is split toning and how does it work?

Adding Split Toning to Black and White Photographs

Split Toning Lightroom Presets