52 Week Photo Challenge // Week 11: Split Tone

Wow! Am I behind, or what?!?!!

Once I was taught how to use the split tone technique, I ended up doing it on a picture that I used some weeks back.

I am not going to write much for these next few posts...I'm just going to try my best to catch up, and then I can start "blogging" my challenges again.

I will try my best to explain the "Split Tone" to you. I can't promise that it will all be correctly explained though. But hey, I'm learning as I go. :)

Split tone is when you have a de-saturated photo, and you add one color to the highlights and somewhat of the opposite color to the shadows. Then play around with the opacity of both highlights and shadows.

I put together somewhat of a tutorial...but because I know how to do it, I may have accidentally left out something. If you have any questions PLEASE comment below, and I will do my best to answer. :)

I use Gimp 2 software. It is free as of right now. Ha. I have a Windows 10 Lenovo, and it works great, once I learned how to use it!

1. Open your original photo. Under the Windows tab, open the Toolbox. Then off of Dockable Dialogs, open Layers and Color.

2. Now it's time to "De-Saturate" your photo. Click on the colors tab, and choose "Colorize"

3. Move the Saturation bar all the way to the left, and there you have a de-saturated/black and white photo. :)

4. Add a Layer Mask to the Shadows and Highlights. The next photo will show you what to click on once you choose "Add Layer Mask".

After the shadows mask, click on highlights mask and choose the same thing.

5. Make sure your clicked on the Layer Mask on the Layers tab, on Shadows. Now click on the Colors tab up top, and choose Invert.

This is what your Layers window should look like. The Shadows layer mask should look inverted.

6. On your Toolbox choose the Fill Bucket. You must check that it is set on filling the whole area. The window below explains.

Choose your colors on your color tab. I did somewhat of a Blue for the highlights, and Brown for the shadows.

(To switch between the foreground colors and background colors, click on the little arrow next to the two colors, and you can toggle with that tool.)

7. Use the Fill tool and click on the image.

This should be what it looks like after the first Fill. Choose the Highlights layer, as pictured below.

Choose the Blue for the Highlights.

Do the same for the Highlights layer. I chose 10 for the opacity on both layers. It's up to what you want the photo to look like. :) The higher the number the more color will be in the photo.

If you followed step-by-step and did the same opacity as I did, your picture should look something like this. :) Obviously it will not exact since you wouldn't be using the same photo I am.

Here is my photo for the challenge below. My opacity is a little different than what was in the tutorial. Please, if you have any questions or thoughts, let me know!