Split Tone in Pixelmator for Creatively Tinted Digital Photos

This easy tutorial will introduce you to a simple technique to split tone in Pixelmator. Split toning is a technique for introducing color tinting to mono photos to add a little more interest than leaving them just as black and white toned images.

Rather than applying a single overall tint that affects the whole image equally, when you split tone in Pixelmator, you apply one tint to the shadow areas and another to the highlights. This can be a very visually subtle technique and in some parts of the photo, the colors will appear to combine to produce a different tint again.

In traditional film photography these split tone effects were achieved by using different chemicals than those specified by the manufacturer during the processing of the film. This could result in varying color shifts in the the different tonal ranges.

In the modern digital world of photo processing, in GIMP and Adobe Photoshop, Gradient Maps are a popular way to achieve this effect. However this isn't a feature that is included with Pixelmator 1.6, so an alternative must be found. Fortunately the Color Balance tool offers a very easy to understand alternative to Gradient Maps and creates results that are just as effective.

For this technique you'll need a digital photo that you'd like to experiment on and a copy of Pixelmator, which can be purchased from the Apple App Store.

• How to Split Tone in Pixelmator
• Open a Digital Photo and Convert to Mono
• Apply a Split Tone in Pixelmator