Sepia Tones

Step 1:

Open your photo.. mine was shot in RAW, so I've just accepted the defaults and switched it from 16bits/channel to 8bits/channel (Image > Mode > 8Bits/channel), I've also made sure that the colour is set to RGB (Image > Mode > RGB). For the ease of use, I've also dropped my photo down to 800x533 pixels, I wouldn't recommend doing this.

Here is our original image:

You can click on this image, it will show the full sized version if you want to download it and follow along in our tutorial before trying it on your own photos.

Step 2:

For this tutorial we are going to be using the layers palette and the adjustment layers section (circled in red) a lot:

We will start initially with an Auto Colour (Shift+Ctrl+B or Image > Auto Colour)and then a  curves adjustment, select the adjustment layer toolbar (circled in red above) and go to Curves. For this image, we're going to go with quite a contrasty curve, so we have some deep blacks and bright whites. Here is the curve I used for this photo:

Step 3:

Now we're going to add our Sepia layer on top. So go back to the adjustment layer toolbar and go to Hue/Saturation make sure you tick the colorize box and change your settings until you have a nice rich sepia / brown look. Here are the settings that I used:

My image now looks pretty weird, but we're not finished with it yet:

We're now going to adjust the layer opacity to 70%

Step 4:

Our image is starting to get a nice colour to it, but the people in the photo are much to dark:

So we are going to add another adjustment layer, but before we do that, we want to define the area that we are going to adjust. select the lasso tool (L) and draw a rough oval around the people:

Now we are going to feather our selection (Select > Modify > Feather) by 70 pixels. Next click on the adjustment layer section and select curves, adjust the curve until you can see some good detail on the people's faces, with out over exposing things. Here is the curve I used:

Step 5:

Not everything we have selected needs to be as bright as it is, in fact things like the 2 columns are too bright and distracting, along with the cement in front of the wedding party, to adjust this you need to select the curves adjustment layer (circled in red below):

Select the brush tool (B) and then paint over the areas we don't want to adjust, making sure that you are using black to paint over the parts you are excluding, I've redone the area's I blacked out in red so you can see where I painted:

Your image should look something like this now:

Step 6:

Last of all you can add a vingette around your image if you want, do this by using the lasso tool to draw a large oval around the people, feather your selection by 100pixels (Select > Modify > Feather), then select the inverse (Select > Inverse or Ctrl+Shift+I) then add another curves adjustment layer (adjustment layer icon > curves) and make a nice dark curve.

Your final image should look something like this:

This effect is particularly effective on portraits of both adults and children.