Selenium Prints in Photoshop Elements

Back to Digital Darkroom/Printing page
Average of 1 ratings: 1.0 stars
 

1 comments Read comments Rate this article

Emulate an alternative print process

By Mason Resnick

September 5, 2008

To prolong print life, darkroom technicians often toned their prints in Selenium, which preserved the prints. As an extra benefit, Selenium prints had a distinctive warm-golden tone overall plus rich, full blacks that enhanced the look of the print.


Similar to Sepia but with the added benefit of preventing long-term print fade, Selenium prints were used by master printers for generations.

Here’s how to get the Selenium toned look in Photoshop Elements. Using this technique you can also try other looks—Cyanotypes, Palladium and of course, Sepia.



Here’s the black-and-white shot,which was originally captured with a Canon G9 camera in color. You want to keep the original image as a color file, so...



Go to Enhance > Adjust Color > Hue/Saturation, and move the Saturation slider all the way to the left, or -100%. This removes color but lets Photoshop treat the file as a color image.



Using the color picker, select an orange, then slide it down towards the darker areas to create a brownish/golden color.



Go into the Layers palate and select the brown/gold layer. Click on Opacity and move the slider to the right until you get a nice warm tone.

Note: You’re not done yet, because the gold/brown layer is affecting the shadows too much, and instead of rich, pleasing blacks, you’re getting mud. We’re going to fix this now.



The secret is in overlays: In the Layers palate, go to the pulldown Blending Mode menu and select Overlay.



The resulting image has overall warmth and deeper, richer blacks. If you don’t like the results, you can continue to adjust sliders, or change the color in the color layer, until you have the effect you want.

Even better: You can change the color layer radically, for instance, yellow or green, to get completely different looks. Use a small percentage of red to get a Sepia tone, and blue to create a virtual Cyanotype! It’s a lot faster and considerably less toxic than the traditional way.

 
About The Author

Mason Resnick is the editor of the Adorama Learning Center and a lifetime photography enthusiast.

Related Articles

Article

PhotoZAP 76: Looking Toward the Future

Article

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Product Review

Article

AdoramaTV Season 1

Article

AdoramaTV Season 2

News

Adobe Photoshop CS6 , Creative Cloud Officially Launched

Search for related articles by topic:

how-to photoshop editing effects selenium

moreRelated Workshops

See all workshops

Related Products

Browse product categories:

Adobe Photoshop Elements
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Adobe Photoshop Elements

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Forward this article to a friend
To use this functionality you should have JS enabled
Bookmark this page

Reader Rating and Comments

1 readers rated this article. Average rating: 1.0 stars
 
  • View
  • 1 comments
0 of 0 people found this comment helpful
 
Short On Info...

"Go into the Layers palate and select the brown/gold layer." Where in the article does it tell you to create a layer or fill it with the color selected in the second step?

by Ivan05 in Tucson, AZ on March 26, 2012

Items per page
Showing 1 of 1 results

Was this article helpful?

Rate this article

Your rating:

Post a comment

*required fields
Bookmark this page