Aper­ture vs Light­room: Split Ton­ing with Light­room & Aper­ture

One of the most com­mon issues I hear about when dis­cussing Aper­ture vs Light­room has to do with devel­op­ing pho­tographs. We addressed that in the gen­eral sense with a pre­vi­ous post about using mul­ti­ple selec­tive adjust­ments with Aper­ture. Today, we’re going to take a look at a spe­cific fea­ture of Lightroom’s Develop mod­ule and demon­strate how to achieve the same result using Aperture’s tools.

Light­room Split Toning

Light­room offers a use­ful tool for Split Ton­ing an image. As you can see, there are two major sec­tions for High­lights and Shad­ows.  Each of those sec­tions includes a Hue and Sat­u­ra­tion. Between them is a slider to adjust the bal­ance between High­lights and Shadows.

To make a Split Tone image, start by reduc­ing the over­all Sat­u­ra­tion of the image until it’s black & white. Next, you can choose the Hue you pre­fer for High­lights and another one for Shad­ows. Think of the Sat­u­ra­tion slider as a vol­ume con­trol. You can make the Hue as sub­tle or punchy as you like.

Another option for select­ing the Hue is to click on the small color rec­tan­gle above the Hue slider. Light­room pro­duces a larger color block for you to use, and also has some default color options as a place to start.

Aper­ture Split Toning

The key to Split Ton­ing with Aper­ture is to use mul­ti­ple Enhance blocks. As with Light­room, drag the Sat­u­ra­tion slider to the left in order to cre­ate a black & white image.

By default, the Tint wheels aren’t dis­played. These are the tools you need to use in order to repli­cate the same style of Split Ton­ing that we see in Light­room. All you have to do is click the tri­an­gle next to the word Tint to reveal them.

We’re going to need at least one more Enhance brick to make this work. The first one only needs to remove all of the Sat­u­ra­tion. Then click the gear icon in the upper right cor­ner. From the fly­out menu, select the option to Add new Enhance adjust­ment. When that appears, click the tri­an­gle by Tint to reveal the color wheels.

Instead of High­lights and Shad­ows, you have Black, Gray and White con­trols.  The Black & Gray wheels are most com­pat­i­ble with  the Hue slid­ers of Lightroom’s High­lights and Shad­ows. The White color wheel has a very sub­tle effect. You can use it or ignore it, depend­ing upon your own preference.

There is only one Sat­u­ra­tion slider per brick.  If you want your Sat­u­ra­tion spread evenly between the two, then you can adjust the Black & Grey on this sec­ond Enhance brick. If you pre­fer to have a sep­a­rate Sat­u­ra­tion adjust­ment for each color wheel — no prob­lem.  Sim­ply add a third Enhance Brick.  Adjust the Blacks & Sat­u­ra­tion on one, and the Gray & Sat­u­ra­tion on the third.  If you’re really picky, you could add yet another Enhance Brick to do the same with the White color wheel.

Aper­ture vs Light­room: Split Ton­ing Differences

The only fea­ture in Light­room Split Ton­ing that’s miss­ing here is the Bal­ance slider.  You can achieve the same result using Aper­ture Enhance bricks, but it takes a bit more dab­bling with the Sat­u­ra­tion slid­ers to do it.

The Split Ton­ing fea­ture in Light­room is global, mean­ing it affects the entire image. By default, so does the Aper­ture Enhance brick. If you want to apply Split Ton­ing selec­tively, you can click the gear icon on the Enhance brick to brush the adjust­ment in or out of the image. If you really want to get some funky images, you could cre­ate mul­ti­ple color tones with addi­tional Enhance bricks and paint them in where you want. It gives Aper­ture a great deal of con­trol over your color toning.

A fea­ture I like in Lightroom’s Split Ton­ing panel is the abil­ity to enter a numeric value for the Hue & Sat­u­ra­tion you desire. If you need to select a pre­cise value, that’s the best way to do it. Aperture’s tint wheels only work with the eye­drop­per or by man­u­ally slid­ing the color wheel. The only way to get a price value is to have a known color you select using the eyedropper.

Aper­ture vs Light­room: Split Tone Examples

I decided to see if I could repro­duce the same kind of Split Tone image in both pro­grams for an Aper­ture vs Light­room com­par­i­son. Click on the exam­ples below to see a larger view.

Light­room Split Tone Example

Aper­ture Split Tone Example

As always, thanks for vis­it­ing the Aper­ture vs Light­room blog.