How to create sepia image in Photoshop

Kenneth Setzer wrote " Discover Seven Ways to Create Sepia Images in Photoshop":

Like most things in Photoshop, there are probably a half dozen ways to simulate a sepia tone image. What probably comes to mind when you hear sepia is most likely “old-time” photographs. But why is that so? Well, sepia toning was used for a few reasons, artistic and more prosaic.

True sepia toning began around the 1880s with photographic prints that were exposed to sepia in order to aid in replacing the metallic silver in the photo emulsion with a silver compound. By doing so the developer could change the color, obviously, but also increase the tonal range of the photo. It was also believed that the sepia toning increased the photo’s longevity by replacing the less stable metallic silver. Indeed, a lot of sepia prints remain to this day. Sepia, it turns out, is simply ink extracted from a cuttlefish (the European Common Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis)), a cephalopod closely related to octopuses and squid!

1. Gradient Map Adjustment Layer
2. Photo Filter Adjustment Layer
3. Black and White Adjustment Layer
4. Color Balance Adjustment Layer
5. Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer
6. Curves Adjustment Layer
7. Solid Color Layer

Creating a duotone in Photoshop can get you even closer to simulating a good sepia tone. But there are two reasons I’m not presenting it here. One, there’s already a great tutorial on duotones right here at Convert Duotones in Photoshop. Second, making a duotone requires some “no-turning-back” operations, like discarding color info, that are best avoided if possible.

There you have it. Seven ways to sepia, and I’m sure you can discover more. Personally, I’m leaning towards using the black and white adjustment layer to remove color, and then creating a solid color adjustment layer above it all to add the sepia tone. This gives you a lot of flexibility. The black and white adjustment layer makes fine tuning your tones easy, and can always be undone and tweaked in the future. The solid color layer lets you change the tint at any time also, and you can more completely control the opacity, and blend mode, of the sepia tint. Best of all, no cuttlefish were harmed in the making of this article.