PhotoPlus SE Sepia Image Effect

Applying a sepia tone effect can help to make a very dull image more exciting, but obviously the better your starting the image, the better your end result, so do look for a picture that you like.

I've taken a shot of one of my t-shirts hanging over a towel rail in our shower room.

This next step could be skipped, however it does offer a greater degree of control over how the final image will appear when in monochrome.

Go to the Image menu, hover on the Adjust command and then select Grayscale from the sub menu, which opens the Filter Gallery with the focus on the Grayscale tools. This has sliders for the Red, Green and Blue colors that make up the image. By adjusting these three sliders, you can vary the appearance of the mono image. Moving a slider to the right will make items containing that color appear lighter, hence moving the Red slider right made the red text on the t-shirt lighten. Even with experience this is a bit trial and error, so keep making adjustments until you're happy and then click OK.

Next go to the Image menu again and select Hue/Saturation/Lightness from the Adjust sub menu. This opens a dialog with three sliders and the first step now is to click the Colorize checkbox. The result is that the image appears to have a colored tone rather than just black and white. By default, the tone will be a little reddish, but this can be easily changed by adjusting the Hue slider. I moved it a little to the right to get the sepia color tone that I find most pleasing, but you could pick a completely different color if you wanted a different effect. I also made a slight adjustment to the Saturation slider, but left the Lightness slider unchanged. When you're happy with your result, just click the OK button.

First select the Ellipse Selection Tool from the toolbar. If it's not visible, click on the down arrow beside the fifth tool down and select the Ellipse Selection Tool. In the Context Toolbar above the image, click on the arrow beside the Feather input field and use the slider to set the amount of feathering. This will vary depending on the resolution of your image, so you may have to come back to this step and try different settings. I'm using a high resolution image so have used the maximum Feather setting of 250.

Now draw an ellipse from the top left to the bottom right and then go to the Select menu and click Invert.

Go to the Layers menu, click New Layer and then the OK button on the dialog that opens. Now go to the Edit menu and click Fill. Click on the Custom radio button and then the box next to it to open the Adjust Color dialog, where you can select black and click OK. Finally click the OK button on the Fill dialog to add a dark vignette around the image. Going to the Select menu and clicking Deselect will remove the live selection from the image. If the edge looks too soft or not soft enough, you can go to Edit > Undo and undo the last few actions, so that you can try applying a different amount of feathering, before repeating this step.

The vignette would look a bit overwhelming if left like this, but we can quickly tweak it to make it more natural. In the Layers palette, click on the Blend Mode drop down, which should be set to the default setting of Normal, and change it to Soft Light. Then click on the arrow beside the Opacity input box to open the slider and reduce the opacity of the vignette layer until you have the result that you're most happy with. I set mine to exactly 50%, but this may vary depending on the image used and personal taste.