Why doesn’t Lightroom Split Toning include gray, black, white, or brown as selectable colors?
Asked 2/27/2013
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In Lightroom’s Split Toning tool, I can choose hues for highlights and shadows, but I don’t see colors like gray, black, white, or brown. Is there a reason those aren’t available in the selector?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
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While split toning can be applied to colour images, it is typically used to add colour to a B&W image, so the ability to change highlights or shadows to white, black or grey wouldn't really make sense.
If you want to change certain colours in your image to a shade of grey, then you'd use HSL and lower the saturation of that colour.
Shades of grey technically have no hue, so any slider in Lightroom/Photoshop that affects hue would not affect pixels that are grey (white or black). So toning, which affects hue, cannot include greys, since they have no hue.
Not sure about brown. It has hue. I think it is more or less a dark red/orange. So if you set the shadows to a red/orange hue, possibly low saturation, you should get something resembling brown. Note: I've tried this - set Hue to "30" and Saturation to "40" in the Shadows and it did a nice brown sepia tone.
Originally by user4191. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user4191
13y ago
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Yes. Split Toning works by adding a hue to the highlights and/or shadows. Gray, white, and black are not hues—they’re neutral tones with little or no saturation—so they aren’t something a hue selector can target directly.
That’s why Lightroom’s Split Toning control only offers colors around the hue wheel. If you want parts of an image to look more gray, you’d typically reduce saturation instead, such as with HSL controls.
Brown is a bit different: it isn’t usually treated as its own separate hue in tools like this. It’s generally perceived as a darker, less saturated orange/red tone. So to create a brownish toning effect, you’d usually choose an orange or red hue and lower the saturation or brightness until it looks brown.
In short: Split Toning selects hue, not neutral tones, and brown is usually achieved by adjusting an existing warm hue rather than picking “brown” directly.
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