There are a number of ways to create a sepia tone effect in Photoshop. This one is my personal favorite. It uses a twist on a method of B&W conversion. What I like about this technique is that is is fast and easy and you have a lot of control over the result.

In my tutorial, Making a Fine Art B&W Image tutorial, I describe a technique for B&W conversion that uses a pair of Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. You can make a sepia tone using exactly the same technique. Let me show you how it's done!

You start with the image you want to give a sepia tone. You add a pair of Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. One on top of the other. You need to change the Blend Mode for the lower layer from Normal to Color. I recommend changing the name of this layer to something like "Contrast Layer." The Blend Mode for the upper layer is left as Normal. I recommend changing its name to something like "Tone Layer."

For B&W, you would set the Saturation slider for the "Tone Layer" to -100. For sepia, you instead adjust all three sliders. Hue = 50, Saturation = -20, and Lightness = +5.

The result is a sepia tone image.

Adjustments to the "Contrast Layer" affect the contrast of the image. Pulling the Hue slider makes quick, wholesale adjustments to contrast. Saturation and Lightness have smaller effects. The image below resulted from setting the Saturation slider to -40. (A moderate amount of Highpass filter sharpening was applied to the image, also.)

IIf you decide you do not want sepia, you can use the Hue Slider on the "Tone Layer" to select another tone. Here's the result of Hue = 0.

The newest version of the TLR Sepia Tint action set (version 1.0c) includes two actions. Apply Sepia Tint uses the method described here. You can tweak the adjustment layers after the action completes. Add Noise just adds a bit of noise to the image to simulate film grain and give the image a more authentic sepia look.

Click here to download the TLR Sepia Tint action set

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