Toner

During this lesson we used two different toners, one being sepia, (to give it that old Victorian look) the other being a very vivid dark blue.

• The first step was to have the prints to use. Then we had to soak each print in water.
• Then once left to soak for about a minute, only if toning with the brown you would have to bleach the print for two minutes. With the blue toner bleaching was not necessary as the bleach was mixed in with the toner.
• Finally the print would be left in the toner for as long as it needed, which would generally be around a minute.

During the toner it's the metallic silver which is converted into a sulfide compound. A good example of a professional who is known for their toning is Henry Fox Talbot, he is one of the major Victorian photographers, he used sepia toning for many of his photographs. Just below to the right is an example of his work.

This is my Blue toned print, here i have only tone half the image to show the difference between before and after, also I do like the effect of having the single flower blue while leaving the other white. The picture below that is my sepia print which is my favourite out of my toned pictures as it looks like a real classic Victorian photograph.

These next pictures are toned using Photoshop.

Before:

After:

This image I adjusted the Hue/Saturation with these settings:

• Hue: -180
• Saturation: -58
• Lightness: -17

This next picture has only ahd the saturation changed:

Before:

After:

How I saturated this,

• Crtl J to make a copy layer
• Used the gaussian blur with a radius of 5
• Changed the blending mode to colour
• Crtl U to put the saturation up

Colour change of an idivuidual item is easy to do, you just need to:

• Lasso around the item
• Right click and select inverse
• Then bring the saturation of the picture all the way down

Here is my example: