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Sepia Toning with The GIMP, Part II

When using the sepia toning technique from my tutorials, I began to ponder exactly how the layer mask was influencing the tinting. I decided to do an experiment with sepia toning the same image using different layer masks. Here are the results:

Remarks	Image	Layer Mask
The original color image.
Original color image after a mode change to grayscale.
Grayscale image after sepia tone applied in color blend mode. The color used was RED=162, GREEN=138, BLUE=101. Heavy uniform sepia cast.
Grayscale image after sepia tone plus layer mask. Layer mask is the grayscale image, lower tones boosted. The result is visibly halfway between the preceeding example and the next. Boosting the lower tones upward in the mask increases the sepia tinting there.
Grayscale image after sepia tone plus layer mask. Layer mask is the grayscale image. This takes the strong edge off of the toning and gives it a sort of selenium-toned look.
Grayscale image after sepia tone plus layer mask. Layer mask is the inverted grayscale image. This one almost looks almost platinum-toned. Similar to using the uninverted grayscale image as the mask, but a little cooler in tone.
Grayscale image after sepia tone plus layer mask. Layer mask is the (almost) inverted grayscale image; bottom tones are inverted, upper tones are only depressed.
Grayscale image after sepia tone plus layer mask. Layer mask is the grayscale image, upper tones inverted. Very similar to using the inverted grayscale image, but notice the dark objects are closer to black-just what you'd expect. This is probably closest to approximating the traditional process of toning if that does indeed favor the midtones over both high- and low-key areas.
Grayscale image after sepia tone plus layer mask. Layer mask is the grayscale image, upper tones inverted and mid tones slightly boosted. Shows how you can boost or reduce the sepia tinting if you are using this approach.

Last modified: Wed Dec 10 22:23:37 HST 2003

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