How to Create a Photoshop Sepia Effect Action

What You’ll Be Creating

In the old days of black-and-white photography, people used different methods to give different tones to their photos, leading to different photo effects. For example, if you used ink from the sepia cuttlefish, you were able to make the tones warmer, while making the photo more durable.

How to Create a Photoshop Sepia Effect Action

Step 1

Open your photo (I used this one). Make sure it’s on the Background layer. If it’s not, go to Layer > New > Background from Layer.

Step 2

Open the Actions panel and create a New Action. Name it Sepia Effect.

Step 3

Add a Gradient Map adjustment.

Step 4

Edit the gradient, adding the following colors in the following locations:

• At 0% use dark, saturated red (#170400)
• At 100% use beige (#f6e5d5)
• At 25% use brown (#6b4e3b)
• At 65% use bright, low-saturated orange (#c5a989)
• At 85% use low-saturated beige (#dfcebf)

Step 5

The colors have been turned into sepia toning already, but we can make this effect more convincing by adding a few more tweaks. Create a New Layer and go to Edit > Fill to fill it with black.

Step 6

Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise.

Step 7

Press Control-T to resize the noise layer. Make it twice as big. Press Enter when you’re done.

Step 8

Change the Blend Mode to Overlay and lower the Opacity to 10%.

Step 9

Press Control-Alt-Shift-E to copy the whole composition into a new layer. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. Adjust the settings to make the bright edges subtly brighter.

Step 10

Stop Recording.

Step 11

If you want to use this action on any other photo, you just need to click Play. If you want to be able to adjust the settings in the process, mark the steps on the list—the marked steps will make the action pause to let you add your own settings.

Photoshop Actions

As you can see, with Photoshop actions you can add cool photo effects to your images without having to repeat all these steps every time. But this also means you can download Photoshop actions made by others and use them without having to do anything at all! Here are a few propositions that you can use to change the toning of your photos.