Sepia: Colorful "Black and White"

Don't look at everything in black and white. Along with a black and white option, some digital cameras offer other effects. One of the most popular of these effects is called sepia tone, or sepia.

Sepia tone is similar to black and white in that it uses a simple color scheme to tell the visual story. In the case of sepia, however, that color is brown.

Originally, sepia prints were produced by adding a pigment to the chemical printing process. This pigment - made from the Sepia cuttlefish - produced longer-lasting photographic prints, but also tinted them brown. That's why, when we think of antique photos, we often think of sepia tone prints.

If your digital camera doesn't have a sepia menu option, that's okay. As with black and white, most good photo editing software also allows you to convert color pictures to sepia tone.