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Image Editing Tutorial - Sepia Toning

Author	Cliff Smith
Published	27th Jan 2008

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First, let's use a photo with an appropriate theme. Sepia toning is one of those editing techniques that tends to get over-used, and it really doesn't suit many subjects. It's best when used on photos of historic subjects, such as old buildings, vintage cars, or in this case people in period costume. In fact even this isn't entirely appropriate, since black and white photography had almost entirely replaced sepia by the 1940s, and early colour photography was already starting to appear. However it will do for our purposes today.

Applying the sepia toning effect couldn't be easier. Simply find the menu option for Hue/Saturation adjustment. In Photoshop Elements it is in the Enhance menu under Adjust Colour. In Paint Shop Pro you'll find it in the Adjust menu under Hue/Saturation.

The first thing to do is to check the box marked Colorize, because Americans don't know how to use "U" and "S" properly. This changes the range of the sliders from centred with positive and negative values to ones with only positive values and zero on the left. The recommended values for authentic-looking sepia tone are a Hue setting of 27 and a Saturation of 21.

The result looks pretty good, I think you'll agree.

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