Retone a Photograph with GIMP

Have you ever looked at old, very subtly sepia-toned black and white photographs and wondered how you can get the same effect with your own photographs? With GIMP, the renowned free and open source image editor, you can easily copy black and white tones from one photograph to another.

Steps

  1. Find an old photo to copy tones from. Sites like the Wikimedia Commons have countless thousands of old photographs which are in the public domain; browse it and find something you like. Save it. Hereafter, we will refer to this as "your old photo".
  2. Find a photo you want to re-tone.

  3. Open both photos in GIMP (File -> Open).
  4. Convert your digital photo to black and white. The lazy way of doing this is by going to Colors -> Desaturate, but does not look very convincing (but, if this gives a result that you feel is acceptable, then by all means do that). Instead, go to Colors -> Components -> Channel mixer. Check the "Monochrome" box. Move the red, green, and blue sliders until you are happy with it. Hit "OK".



  5. Create a new image (File -> New), which will soon become a chromatic microcosm of your old photo (we'll get to that in a second). Set "Width" to 256, and "Height" to some arbitrary workable value (50 or 100 is fine). Hit "OK". Hereafter, we will refer to the image you just created as your gradient image.

  6. Pick the lightest and darkest colors from your old photo. To do this, bring up the color picker tool (from the toolbox, Tools -> Color Picker, or just hit your O key). Click on the brightest part of your old photo. Then find the darkest part of your photo, and hold down Control while clicking that. Check your main GIMP window to verify that the colors have been picked successfully.

  7. Go back to your gradient image (the 256-pixels-wide one you created earlier).
  8. Select the blend tool from either the toolbox, or by hitting L. Create a gradient on your gradient image by holding down control (this ensures that the line is straight) and dragging your mouse from the far left hand side of the image to the far right, while holding down the left mouse button all the while. You have now, hopefully, created a nice smooth gradient, with everything from the darkest to the lightest tone in your old photo. Save this gradient image; you might want to use it again later.

  9. Go back to the photo that you want to re-tone (the one that you made black and white earlier).
  10. Colorize the photo. Go to Colors -> Map -> Sample Colorize. From the drop-down box in the top right, marked "Sample", make sure that your gradient image is selected. Hit "Get Sample Colors". Play with the sliders until the image on the left (your photo) looks good to you. Hit "Apply", and wait a few seconds. Then hit "Close". You have now restored your image.

  11. Decide whether you like it or not. You may find that the effect of this is either too subtle or not subtle enough for your tastes. So...

  12. Saturate or desaturate your new colorized image to taste. Go to Colors -> Hue/Saturation. Adjust the "Saturation" slider up and down until you think it looks right.

  13. Admire your finished photo. Or don't, and try experimenting with tones from as many old photos as you can find.


Things You'll Need

  • The free-and-open-source GIMP image editor.
  • Two photos; an old one from which to copy sepia (or other) tones, and another to which you want to copy those tones.

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