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Toning refers to the process of adding color to a black and white photograph. The Toning checkbox behaves differently than the other controls in the hue selective tool panel, in that it adds color globally and its effect is most noticeable in neutral colors. Toning is included with the hue selective tools, because these tools can be powerful when used in combination.
To use toning in the customary way, you would first desaturate every hue handle, and then check the Toning checkbox and select a toning color. EditLab's color selection window will be displayed, allowing you to choose a color, and the preview image will be updated as you experiment with different selections.
At this point, although the original color has been removed from the image, you can still perform hue selective edits based on the original hues. So, for example, you can adjust the lightness levels of different hue handles to achieve better distinction between similar areas in the image. Depending on the distribution of hues in the image, you may also be able to achieve special effects, by increasing the saturation of some hues and not others, as seen in these examples:
The original image is on the left. The second image is the result of desaturating each hue and adding a sepia tone. In the third image, the blue hue handle was brightened and the green one was darkened, resulting in better discrimination between the tones in the sweater. For the fourth image, the saturation of the blue, green and yellow handles was increased.
If you click the B/W button, it will quickly set every hue to minimum saturation. If you click the Sepia button, it will set every hue to minimum saturation, and set the toning color to a standard sepia tone. These buttons are shortcuts that set multiple controls for you. You can then fine tune any of the settings.
You can also customize the meaning of these buttons. If you hold down the key when you click the B/W button, EditLab's color selection window will be displayed, allowing you to associate a toning color with the B/W button. So, for example, if you prefer a warmer grayscale, you can select a reddish tone, and then the next time you use the B/W button, a reddish tone will be applied after the conversion to grayscale. If you hold down the key when you click the Sepia button, you can select a different toning color to associate with the Sepia button.
The same window is used to select colors for several purposes in EditLab: selecting a tone color, customizing the Sepia and B/W buttons, and selecting a neutral preference.
In each of these cases, the color is used across the lightness range of the image, so the current color selection is displayed as a gradient.
You can use the three sliders to add or subtract red, green and/or blue from the current color selection.
If you click the Color Picker button, you can use a standard color picker to choose a color.
You may save a color definition into an external file by clicking the Save… button. Similarly, color definitions may be loaded from an external file by clicking the Load… button. This will replace the current color definition with the definition found in the file.
Clicking the Restore Defaults button will restore the factory default value for the current color, that is, the values that were present when EditLab was first installed.
Click the OK button to save the new color, or Cancel to return to the main EditLab window without change.
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