Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan black and white. I like color, and taking all the color out of a photo is just depressing to me. Sometimes though, contrasting the heck out of a picture and boosting all the color isn’t appropriate either. Dilemma… Is there a happy medium? Yes. It’s called sepia, and it’s cooler than black and white in my opinion.
Sepia is super easy to achieve. All you need is a photo to edit and a means to edit it. I’m poor, so I use The GIMP because it’s free and it has virtually all the capability of Photoshop in terms of photo retouch. Maybe some Photoshop gurus would challenge me on that, but whateva’. Don’t taze me bro’.
Alright, so open your photo in the program. This is the one I’m going to use:
It's my sister! ^_^
P.S. The photo I’m using is already edited. I retouched it previously and I recommend that you do the same before you get going on the sepia. But for the sake of brevity, I’m going to stick to the sepia aspect. If you need retouching tips, you might find this Curves Tutorial helpful.
In your color menu, bring up ‘Colorize.’ In Photoshop, you have to open up “Hue/Saturation” and make sure the box that says ‘Colorize’ is checked. This is likely all you’ll need. It includes Hue, Saturation and Lightness perimeters. Once you open ‘Colorize’ and all the meters are at equilibrium, two things will happen: a) it will change to a blueish color that looks terrible and b) a lot of saturation will be added. Drag the Hue to the far left until you reach the reddish colors. I had mine set at 18 and here’s what it looks like so far:
Next, adjust the lightness. If you set it too high, everything will look really washed out and way too bright. You’ll be able to see that if you have eyes. A low setting might be appropriate if you’re editing a picture of someone about to commit suicide or something equally depressing. I had mine at 27, but Photoshop and GIMP meter their Lightness and Saturation perimeters completely differently, so if you’re using Photoshop, then it won’t look the same as on GIMP:
Finally, modify the Saturation. This is where it’s really up to your artistic eye to decide how saturated you want it. Some pictures will look better with very little color left in them, and some will look better with more. That’s why this tutorial is so easy. There’s no right or wrong really. I’m just showing you what settings you need to mess around with to get the effect. So here’s the final result:
Sheesh, I wish my curves tutorial was that easy. Now go forth and make your profile pictures sepia. Then join my Sepia Club.