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Dan Rodney/3 min read

Split Toning a Black & White Image

Color Grading Steps

1

White Balance First

Get neutral colors right before any creative grading.

2

HSL Panel

Shift, lighten, or darken individual color ranges.

3

Color Grading

Set highlight, midtone, shadow color tints for mood.

4

Match Across the Set

Sync settings across selected images for consistency.

Master Adobe Tools at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop's Graphic Design Certificate covers Photoshop alongside the broader Adobe toolkit that complements Lightroom in any photography workflow.

Gain deep insights into photo editing techniques with this comprehensive Lightroom tutorial, which covers a variety of topics including working with highlights and shadows, importing new photos, and applying the split toning technique.

Topics Covered in This Lightroom Tutorial:

Working with Highlights & Shadows

Exercise Preview

lightroom previewB6

Exercise Overview

Split Toning is an old technique from the days of the darkroom where you take a black & white image and make the highlights one color and the shadows another color. In this exercise, we’ll show you how to do this in Lightroom.

Importing New Photos

  1. Make sure you’re in the Library module.

  2. At the bottom of the left panel, click Import.

  3. Under Source, navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Lightroom Class and select the Bonus folder.

  4. At the top, above the photos, make sure Add is selected (highlighted).

  5. In the File Handling panel on the right, uncheck Build Smart Previews if it isn’t already. We won’t need them for these photos.

  6. On the bottom right, click the Import button.

Working with Highlights & Shadows

  1. In the Catalog panel on the left, Previous Import should already be open.

  2. Click on the photo of the tree (20110827_ben_1428) shown in the exercise preview.

  3. Press D to enter the Develop module.

  4. First we need to convert the image to black & white. On the right, expand the HSL / Color / B & W panel if it isn’t already.

  5. Click on B & W to convert the image to black & white.

  6. Below the HSL / Color / B & W panel, expand the Split Toning panel.

  7. Notice the Split Toning panel has two sections: Highlights and Shadows.

    We are going to make the highlights yellow and the shadows blue. Generally, it’s good to make the lighter areas a warm color and the shadows a cool color.

  8. To the right of Highlights, click the color rectangle color rectangle and use the eyedropper to select a yellow color.

  9. Click the X button on the top left of the color box to close it. The highlights now have a yellow tint.

    NOTE: We can also choose a color using the Hue and Saturation sliders.

  10. Hue changes the color components. Under Highlights, move the Hue slider back and forth to see how the effect changes with different colors.

  11. Set Hue to 57 when you are done experimenting.

  12. Under Highlights, move the Saturation slider to the left to see that it minimizes the effect.

  13. Move the Saturation slider to the right to see that it intensifies the effect.

  14. Set Saturation to 50 when you are done experimenting.

  15. To the right of Shadows, click the color rectangle color rectangle and use the eyedropper to select a blue color.

  16. Click the X button on the top left of the color box to close it. Note that the shadows have become a blue color.

  17. Under Shadows, set the following to change the color:

    Hue: 242
    Saturation: 60

    Let’s make a few more adjustments to really bring out the highlights and also increase the shadows.

  18. In the Basic panel, make the following adjustments:

    Highlights: Decrease to – 52
    Shadows: Increase to + 63
    Blacks: Decrease to – 19
  19. Go back to the Split Toning panel and make the following adjustments:
    • Take the Saturation of the blue Shadows down a tiny bit to 50.
    • Change the Saturation of the yellow Highlights to 45.

  20. Click the Switch icon switch icon (to the left of Split Toning) to flip between before and after split toning.

  21. Click the Before & After icon before after yy button at the bottom left to see the original photo next to the photo that has the split toning effect applied.