Photoshop Split Tone
By Bill Guy

A terrific advantage that Photoshop offers is the ability to create our images colors that don’t exist anywhere in nature. One of these processes is Split Toning, putting two different color tones in the highlights and shadows of an image.

The easy way to do this is to first select just the highlights of an image. Hold down CTRL + Shift + ALT + ~ (tilde) and the dancing ants will show you the selection of just highlights. Click on the little ying yang symbol at the bottom of the Layer’s Pallet for Adjust layers and pick Color Balance. In the Color Balance box click on Highlights first and move the sliders for the color you like then do the same for midtones. Click OK then go back to the image and do the select highlight key thing again but once the selection is made go to Select / Inverse so that now you have just the shadows and lower midtones selected. Make a new adjustment layer for this selection of Color Balance and change the tones of shadows and midtones.

When you are done you will have an adjustment layer for the highlights and one for the shadows. You can go in and re adjust these colors, reduce the opacity of the layers, or if you want more intensity from this process create yet another adjustment layer. This new layer will be above the image but this time make it a Hue and Saturation layer. Moving the Saturation slider you can make this as strong or weak as you want.

With split tones you can use very warm colors for highlights and cool tones in the shadows or vise a versa. You can even make your digital images look like they were cross processed with wild colors for that other worldly feel.