How To Use Sepia Tone Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial you are going to learn how to make your photos have a sepia tone look. This really is one of the easiest effects to apply, and one of the most common effects that you see on photos that are meant to look old. You often times see this on photos that are taken of people that are dressed in old western clothing.

To start off, I just want to say that in order to complete this tutorial, you are going to need to know the basics of Photoshop. This is not a hard effect to do at all, but it can be if you don't know how to get around Photoshop.

Okay, let's get started with the sepia tone effect in Photoshop.

Step One. The very first thing that you need to do is to choose a photo that you want to apply the sepia effect to and open it in Photoshop. I like to apply the sepia tone effect to images that are meant to look like they were taken in the older western days, but this effect can be applied to any image, and look nice.

Step Two. Once you have your image open, you now need to create a new Adjustment Layer. The adjustment layer that you want is the Gradient Map. To create this new adjustment layer, click on the adjustment layer button at the bottom of the layers window (looks like a circle filled with half black and half white) and click on Gradient Map. This will open up the Gradient Map window.

Step Three. Once in the Gradient Map window, your goal is to make the image black and white. To do this, use the drop down beside of the long color bar, and choose the black to white gradient. It is usually on the top row, and the third to the right. Now you can click OK on the Gradient Map window.

Step Four. Now that you have a black and white image, the next step is to make another new adjustment layer. The adjustment layer that you want this time is the Solid Color adjustment layer. You can get to this one the same way that you did before, and choosing Solid Color.