Tip #3123 - A Gradient Lesson
Printer Friendly Version | E-Mail This Tip
A
Gradient Lesson
At some point during
all of your Photoshop adventures, I'm sure you all have wondered at least
a little about the gradient tool. What really do you use the gradient
tool for? All it seems to do is cover your images with different colors.
Well, today is your day! We are going to go over what you can really use
this gradient tool for, in a productive manner. For this purpose, I am
going to use the following picture. In this specific example, I am going
to demonstrate how I used the gradient effect to shade the clouds and
the water in the picture below.
In this picture, we
can use the gradient tool to give a different shade to the water, as well
as, the clouds. I am going to make two different layers with the gradients
on them. One at the bottom for the water shading and one for the sky.
To start with, let's
choose a gradient. For this picture here, I have chosen a liner gradient,
but you can pick whatever you would like.
The second step is
to choose a color. The gradient that I have chosen gives a foreground
color to a transparent effect. That is, from the color you chose to transparent.
Create a new layer and drag the gradient from the top to the mid area
of the image. The color of the gradient should overlap your image. Does
it look a little foggy? Well, worry not! In this example, I created another
layer and moved the gradient from the bottom up to the midpoint of the
image. Yes, you guessed it right. It’s meant to shade the water.
The two gradients should now cover the top and the bottom of your image.
Let’s go ahead and merge the two layers on which you have the top
and bottom gradients. To merge, go to Layer, Merge
Down or press Ctrl + E.
Now, both the gradients
should be on the same layer. The last step involves changing the blending
mode of the layer to multiply. It’s pretty simple. In the Layers
palette, click on the Blending Mode option and select
Multiply.
Does it look better
now or what? Similarly, you can do two other things here. One, experiment
by changing the color of your gradient and second, try out different layer
blending modes to see what effect they give you. This is what I eventually
ended up with:
As you can see, this
little trick works really well on outdoor pictures, especially when there’s
a little bit of the sky in the picture too. Not only has it added a nice
dusky effect, it has made the image a lot sharper. This can be used to
make all those sunset pictures even prettier than they are in their natural
form. Likewise for all those big city skyline pictures that everyone loves
to take. Give it a spin!
~ Yogesh Bakshi
Want To Comment On This Tip? Click Here! We'd love to hear from you :-)
Like These Tips? Get 'Em Free In Your E-mail
