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DPChallenge Forums >> Tips, Tricks, and Q&A >> gradient mapping... ?
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 07/24/2006 06:01:20 PM · #1
Ok, so I've noticed quite a few photographers whose work I love use gradient mapping.

I looked it up in photoshop "help(?)" and have tried searching for useful stuff in the forums, without much luck.

I've so far learned how to create new gradients and gradient maps; I've also messed around with all the settings, and I know that the colors in the gradient correspond to certain color values in the photo, but I'm not coming up with much of anything, lol

So, my question is, Does anyone have any basic, step by step, useful information regarding when and how to use gradient mapping? and What kinds of tricks and visuals can you achieve by using gradient mapping?

Thank you in advance for any help

Amanda
 07/24/2006 06:27:38 PM · #2
ok i will try...;)

i mostly use gradient map either to do a duetone conversion (b&w, sepia,...) or just to increase the contrast of a photo.

let`s start with a b&w conversion (not the only nor the best way to do so, but it`s simple and you can have a nice result) of this photo :



to this...



i just used gm at the normal modus and incresaed the bw contrast by shuffling the stick (or whatever) for the black and the one for the white nearer together.
you can also do that with black (or darker grayscale or brown tones) with a yellow/orange tone to get a sepia.

the result of using gm for increasing the overall contrast of an image you can see here:



you can see it's also in warmer tones now, because i used the colors black (or dark gray) and a yellow tone, but not in the normal mode, but in modus "soft light".
i do that always for portraits, because you get this nice warm skin color.
for architechture i use this "soft light modus" with the colors black and white (so only grayscale) to get a chrome effect

and don`t forget to always play around a bit with the settings...

hope it helps a bit (and forgive my bad english)
just pm me for any further questions

edit for some corrections ;)

Message edited by author 2006-07-24 18:39:44.
 07/24/2006 07:11:13 PM · #3
hmm.. I will play around with it some more, maybe I'm missing the soft light mode you're talking about
 07/25/2006 12:14:53 AM · #4
bump
 07/25/2006 12:19:45 AM · #5
Ditto what Mephisto said. I almost always use it in my workflow although I haven't been using it in basic editing since I didn't know until recently it was legal in those challenges. Basically, I use it for tonal adjustments using the luminosity blending mode most of the time (set to 50% or lower opacity). Usually I'll apply it selectively more than once to an image, if needed.

Message edited by author 2006-07-25 00:20:46.
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