Back in the day, if you wanted to enhance your landscape photo by applying a different color to the background and foreground, you’d have to attach a bi-color filter to your lens.
These days, many different editing programs have a bi-color filter in their toolkit, Luminar 3 among them.
What’s so great about applying a bi-color filter is that you can use it to warm up the sky and cool down the landscape, which makes it ideal for sunset photos, especially those taken with a body of water in the foreground.
Of course, bi-color toning can be used in all sorts of different applications in landscapes, but seascape sunsets happen to be my favorite!
In the video above, Jim Nix walks us through the process of using Bi-Color Toning in Luminar 3.
I’ve used his instruction to develop a step-by-step process of using this filter, which you can find below.
Bi-Color Toning in a Nutshell
As noted above, Bi-Color Toning is all about enhancing different areas of a photo with two different colors.
To get started, open an image in Luminar 3.
Next, select the Bi-Color Toning filter from the Filter menu. As you can see below, the filter has a number of controls that allow you to fine-tune how the filter is applied.
On the top is the Amount Slider, which controls the intensity of the filter. Below that is a Toning Preset, which gives you a variety of options to choose from regarding the tones that are applied, including brown, violet/pink, moss, green/brown, and cool/warm. You can also make a custom preset if you wish.
This filter also has independent controls for the top and bottom colors. This enables you to use a color picker to make precise color selections for the filter, as shown below.
Lastly, the Bi-Color Toning Filter has a control to set the orientation of the filter.
In other words, you can determine where the transition between the top color and bottom color occurs.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the Set Orientation tool is essentially a gradient -you can determine whether the filter is applied in horizontal or vertical fashion (or somewhere in between) as well as how gradually the filter transitions from one color to the other.
So, with the basics of Bi-Color Toning out of the way, let’s explore how to use it.
Learn More:
- Make Beautiful Edits to Your Images With This Basic Post-Processing Workflow
- How to Get Started in Luminar
How to Use Bi-Color Toning
As Jim explains in the video, sometimes the presets in the Bi-Color Toning Filter might not perfectly fit the scene you have in the photo.
As he suggests, it might be more useful to use the individual top and bottom color pickers to get the precise look you’re going for.
Jim shows us this workflow in action using the image above. As you can see on the right side of the screen, some editing has already been done in the Develop Workspace, but no Bi-Color Toning has been done yet.
As you can see above, adding a Bi-Color Filter has a significant effect on the photo.
In this case, Jim placed the filter right at the horizon line so the top color impacts the sky and the bottom color impacts the landscape.
Using the color picker, Jim selected a deep blue color for the top to give the image more of a Blue Hour feel.
Next, he followed the same procedure for the bottom color of the filter, selecting an earthy brown color that works well with the sand on the beach and the golden tones of the setting sun.
As Jim shows us, it’s important to note that you can easily change the color that has been selected by simply dragging the bullseye around the color wheel. Doing so gives you an immediate preview in the image, that way you can select the perfect color combination.
Learn More:
How to Quickly Enhance Your Photos
photo by trumzz via iStock
As we’ve seen here, enhancing your photos is a straightforward process if you use the Luminar 3 Bi-Color Toning Filter.
Granted, this filter isn’t ideal for every type of photo, but it is certainly a valuable asset to have when editing seascapes, landscapes, and even cityscapes.
Now that you’re familiar with Bi-Color Toning and how to use it, it’s time to experiment! Grab a copy of Luminar, upload a few photos to the library, and see how much this one filter can improve your photos.
Learn More:
- Luminar Review - What You Need to Know About Luminar 3
- How to Take a Photo From Blah to Beautiful in a Matter of Minutes