A great way to convert photographs into colorful variations is to use the color balance adjustment to tone the shadows and highlights of your image into two different colors.

The Tone Effect technique can give your images a Pop art look or an aged mono/duo toned looked. Great way to further stylize a photograph and create something new and add some creative flair.

Step 1. Open your photo and adjust the Levels and or Curves. Make the Shadows the darkest areas and the highlights the whitest.


Step 2. Open your photo and convert it into a grayscale or black and white image. Go to Image/Adjustment/Hue Saturation and slide the saturation slider all the way down to the left. Or you can go to Image/Mode/Grayscale then you will have to convert it back into RGB, it will retain the new color mode of the grayscale though but it can now be colorized.


Step 3. Apply an Adjustment Layer of Color Balance to this layer. Go to Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Color Balance.

Step 4. Select the Shadows option in the Tone Balance part and slide the color sliders to the color you want to fill for the shadows. Do the same for the Highlights.

Step 5. Make a final adjustment to the Curves and also give it some more contrast if you feel it could use the extra pop.


Step 6. A trick I use to create some additional graphical quality to the photo is using the Threshold adjustment. Go to Image/Adjustment/Threshold and apply something that still retains some of the detail. Hit OK and then go to Edit/Fade Threshold and change the Mode option from Normal to something like Soft Light or Overlay and lower the opacity down to around 20-40% so that the effect is subtle.
Bookmark this post:
2 Responses to “Tone Effect: Colorizing Shadows and Highlights”
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!






















Hi Patrick -I so enjoy reading your articles. Marianne & I are signed up for a digital-photography class at SUNY in September. I am sure that we will be sharing ideas with you.
Keep up the insightful writings, & keep cranking them out …
Great Dan! Thanks for checking it out and I look forward to sharing ideas with you after your class.