How to add Sepia tone to a color photo using Variations...in Photoshop CS6 (Destructive methodt)

Sepia tone means giving a brownish color to the black and white version of the image.It gives a somewhat antique look to the image.
There are  various ways of getting Sepia tone on an image.Here we shall discuss the method that is  destructive which  means that the method applies the changes directly to the image.We will use a Variations... command to get the sepia toning.

                                                              Before               After

1) Opening the image in the Photoshop window

Open the colored image in Photoshop CS6 by using the menu File > Open or by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + O .This will open a dialog box.Select the image by clicking on its name and click on Open button.

                                             

We can see the image opened as a Background layer in the Layers panel.

 2) Selecting the Desaturate option

After we see the image in Photoshop window we need to select the Desaturate option.There are two ways of selecting the desaturate option.

a) Select menu Image > Desaturate... 

b) The other way to select the Desaturate option is by using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + U

This will remove the color from the image instantly and turn it to black and white.

3)Selecting the Variations... Command

 For selecting the Variations... command we need to select menu Image > Adjustments >Variations...
This will open a Variations Dialog box with a number of images.The midtones radio button is selected by default.Move the Fine Coarse slider towards the left one notch down the middle point.Fine to Course decides the amount of color to be applied. Click on More Yellow once .Click on More Red once.Click on OK button and exit out of the Variations... dialog box.
We can see the sepia effect on the image.

 4)Resetting the adjustments
In the variations dialog box we can see two images next to each other at the top.One is the original image without any adjustments applied and the other is the image after the adjustments applied.If we think we made a mistake and added wrong effects in the Variations... dialog box we can either press Cancel button .This will close the dialog box without applying the changes to the image.
Alternatively we can press the ALT key on the keyboard .This will change the  Cancel button in the Variations dialog box into Reset button .Pressing the  Reset button will Reset the adjustments in the Variations... dialog box and the image will be back to its original state.We can then start over again.

5)Saving the image

After we are satisfied with the adjustments we will save the image by selecting the menu File > Save or using the keyboard shortcut CTRL + S.This will open a dialog box where we can write the name of the image.After typing a name click on Save button.

The disadvantage of using this method is that once we save the image we cannot get the original colored image again.It is advisable to save a copy of the original image.