Split toning is an editing technique that adds one color tint to the highlights of an image and a different color tint to the shadows, splitting the tones into two color families. The classic example pairs warm orange or yellow highlights with cool blue or teal shadows, producing the cinematic look common in films and modern portraits, but any combination is possible.
The technique has deep roots in the darkroom, where chemical toners shifted the color of a black-and-white print. Selenium toner cooled and deepened the shadows while adding archival permanence, sepia toner turned a print warm brown, and photographers combined toners to push highlights and shadows in different directions. Digital split toning recreates and extends this control without chemicals.
Working digitally, the editor chooses a separate hue and saturation for the bright and dark ends of the tonal range, and balances how the two meet in the midtones. On a black-and-white conversion, split toning is a powerful way to add subtle color life without returning to full color, such as warm highlights over slightly cool shadows for a timeless print feel, and it pairs naturally with the monochrome look.
On a color image it works more like a color grade, pushing the overall mood warmer, cooler, or more stylized, and it interacts with adjustments to the tone curve and overall white balance. The teal-and-orange pairing is popular because skin tones sit in the orange range while shadows go teal, the complementary opposite, so faces pop against cooler surroundings.
In current software the idea has been folded into broader color grading tools. Lightroom and Camera Raw replaced the dedicated split toning panel with a color grading panel offering separate color wheels for shadows, midtones, and highlights, plus blending and balance controls, which is split toning expanded to three zones. The underlying concept is identical: tint different parts of the tonal range with different colors.
The key to split toning is restraint. A little color separation adds depth, mood, and a polished, cohesive feel, while too much looks artificial and muddies skin tones. Most photographers keep the saturation low and lean on an understanding of color theory, often choosing complementary hues like orange and blue because they sit opposite each other on the wheel and reinforce one another.
A good way to learn split toning is to start from a look you admire, identify whether its highlights run warm or cool and its shadows the opposite, and try to recreate that relationship at low strength. Building a few subtle presets you can apply and then dial back gives a consistent, recognizable style across a body of work. Because the effect lives entirely in post, it is fully reversible, so it rewards experimentation in a way that a look baked in at capture never could.