An effect similar to chemical solarization can be achieved by manipulating a digital photograph with an image editor. In the procedure described below, a photograph is partially solarized, i.e. only a black-and-white copy is solarized whereas the color background remains unchanged.

The photograph (basic image) was taken in November 2006 on a late afternoon. The camera used is the Nikon D80 with a Nikkor 17-55mm 1:2.8 lens (set at f = 23mm, 35mm equivalent is 35mm).
The image was manipulated in five steps:
	1		The layer containing the basic image is duplicated.
	2		The image on the upper layer is de-saturated.
	3		The Curves tool of GIMP is applied to the image on the upper layer, setting see screen shot.
	4		Opacity of the upper layer is set to 75 %, the basic image on the lower layer shines through. The two layers are merged.
	5		The Levels tool is partially applied to increase contrast, i.e. the layer is duplicated, the Levels tool is set to Auto and applied to the upper layer which is then set to 80 % opacity and merged with the lower layer.

View a sequence of images showing the progress of the manipulation step by step (the numbers of the pages correspond to the numbers of the above table). The images are scaled down to 1500 x 1000 pixel, slightly sharpened (Unsharp Mask: Radius 1, Amount 0.2, Threshold 5) and converted to JPEG (Quality 90 %).

Some of the details are lost by downscaling. View the final image in original size (3872 x 2592 pixel). This image was not sharpened. Note that the branches, especially in the upper left corner of the image, have a black rim due to the solarization process.