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I used to love cross-processing. I had the good fortune of working in a photo lab when I was younger, so had the opportunity to print my own cross-processed negatives. What struck me was that there were so many ways to interpret the colour shifts – whether to leave the yellows and reds full of saturated punch, or pull them back to more realistic tones with shifts in just the blacks and highlights. And each film had its own unintended colour change.
Split-toning allows for some of that same creative exploration through contemporary post-processing. The technique hinges upon shifting the shadows and highlights into colour directions not true to the shot image. The highlighted colour is usually shifted to a complementary colour to the shadow – so blue shadow, orange highlight; purple shadow, yellow highlight etc. They don’t have to be exact complements – in this case I wanted the entire image to have a bit of a greenish cast, so while the shadow shifted towards blue-green, the highlight was a yellow leaning to the green side.

Split Toning Before and After

Split toning can be done in the software of your choice:

• Aperture – shift colours using the tint wheels in Enhance
• Lightroom – use the Split Toning feature
• Photoshop – many options, but the best choices are Channel Mixer or adjust colour channel curves separately

The original shot is fine but lacks any emotion. Pulling up the black level brings out more detail, makes the shot more subtle and makes the shot feel less digital. A light adjustment with the channel mixer also helps to increase the colour shifts, and then the saturation is reduced so the colours are not overpowering.