![]() The tried and true method of blending in Photoshop is just simply lowering the opacity. Let’s take a look at a couple of methods to help blend our new Gradient Map into the image. This is a coastal portrait, so blues and cyans work well at giving it more of a seaside feel. We don’t want to completely transform a photo, we just want to make some subtle shifts to the colors to help express a particular tone or mood. The key to great coloring is preserving the natural tones and character of an image. You could use this effect if you want an image that’s heavily colored and stylized, but how can we make this more subtle? Coloring Your Photos So now we know how Gradient Maps work, but the effect is way over the top. In our example, we added various shades of blue that get progressively brighter towards the highlights. If you’re choosing midtones that are brighter and more near the right side of the bar, choose a lightness that matches. So if you’re choosing a color for the brightest highlights, keep the color bright (near white). Keep in mind this important tip: if you want realistic results, colors should progress from darkest to lightest going from left to right along the gradient bar. ![]() Choose a dark blue, and then continue adding a couple more colors to the gradient. The Color Picker window will open, allowing you to select any color you want to assign to the darks of the image. Select one of the default gradients and then click the leftmost marker near the shadows of the gradient bar below. Notice that there are additional markers along the gradient as well! The magic of gradients is that you can add any number of colors that you want! This gradient is applying dark purples into the shadows, rich shades of copper and rust into the midtones, and creamy yellows into the highlights. We recommend one of our custom PHLEARN gradients since they’re made with portraits in mind, but any will do. Let’s take a closer look at how to create and customize gradients. We can choose a premade gradient (either one of the many offered with Photoshop or the custom PHLEARN gradients available in the download of this tutorial), we can create our own custom gradient using the tool at the bottom, or we can combine the two options, choosing a premade gradient and then adjusting it to our taste. The Gradient Editor allows us to do a number of things. By default, the gradient is set to convert the shadows to black, the highlights to white, and the midtones will be converted to various shades of gray depending on their lightness. A Gradient Map will assign color to the highlights midtones and shadows of a photo. Looking at the default gradient will explain why our image is now in black and white. The heart of working with Gradient Maps is in the Gradient Editor, which you can open by double-clicking on the gradient bar in the Gradient Map properties window. We need some color! Let’s take a look at why the image changed to monochrome and how we can add a splash of color. Now, you can use Gradient Maps to change an image into black and white ( among other tools), but that’s not how we want to use them today. When you first create a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer, you’ll notice that it converts your photo to black and white. Gradient Maps allow us to assign the colors of a gradient to the highlights, midtones, and shadows of an image. This is especially true for those moments when you just want to apply professional-grade coloring as fast as possible. While Curves and Levels are very powerful for both color grading and exposure changes, sometimes there’s an easier and more effective way to get the job done. If you’ve watched PHLEARN before, you’ve probably heard use rave about how great Adjustment Layers like Curves and Levels are. That means we can use as many Adjustment Layers as we want while editing, then adjust, disable, or delete them at any time without damaging the original image. Adjustment Layers are powerful, not only because they allows us to precisely adjust things like color and exposure, but because they’re also 100% non-destructive. Gradient Maps are just one of the many useful Adjustment Layers that Photoshop offers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |