![]() ![]() If you click on the Midpoint marker and look down at the Location option at the bottom of the Gradient Editor dialog box, you'll see that it's set to 50%. By dragging the marker left or right, we can adjust the brightness of the midtones in our black and white image. We can do the same thing here with the gradient's Midpoint marker. If you're familiar with how Photoshop's Levels adjustment works, you know that with a Levels adjustment, we can brighten or darken the midtones in an image (the brightness levels that fall between pure black and pure white) by dragging the midtone slider. We can move the midpoint of the gradient simply by clicking on the marker and dragging it left or right. By default, it's, well, in the middle, but it doesn't have to be. The one on the far left will appear black, while the one on the far right will be white (since our gradient goes from black on the left to white on the right):Ĭlicking on either color stop brings up a Midpoint marker below the middle of the gradient.Īs you may have guessed from it's name, the Midpoint marker controls where the middle of the gradient falls between the two color stops on either side of it. These two color stops control the two main colors that make up our gradient. ![]() If you look directly below either end of the gradient preview bar, you'll see a color stop. Step 4: Adjust The Midtones With The Midpoint Marker By making changes to the appearance of the gradient, we can fine-tune the appearance of our black and white image. The Gradient Editor contains another gradient preview bar showing us the current gradient colors, but unlike the Gradient Map dialog box, the Gradient Editor allows us to change and/or adjust the colors in the gradient. We can try to enhance the results even further by making a few simple changes to the gradient we're using.Ĭlick directly on the gradient preview bar in the Gradient Map dialog box (or Adjustments Panel in CS4) to bring up Photoshop's Gradient Editor. We'll look at how to do that next! Step 3: Open The Gradient Editorīy simply mapping the original colors in the photo to our black-to-white gradient using the Gradient Map adjustment, we've managed to achieve decent results for our black and white conversion. It's not a bad start, but we can make some adjustments to our gradient to improve our black and white results. The swatch in the top left represents the Foreground color, while the swatch in the bottom right is the Background color:Īll of the original colors in the image have now been mapped to black, white, or some shade of gray in between. You can check to see what your current colors are by looking at the Foreground and Background color swatches near the bottom of the Tools palette. Since black and white are Photoshop's default Foreground and Background colors, there's a good chance that yours are already set to black and white. So before we do anything else, let's make sure our Foreground and Background colors are set to their defaults, which, as luck would have it, just happen to be black (Foreground color) and white (Background color)! We want to convert our image to black and white, which means we'll want to map the colors in the image to a black-to-white gradient. While that may (or may not) be interesting from a creative perspective, it's definitely not the effect we're aiming for here. If, for example, our current Foreground color was red and our Background color was purple and we applied a Gradient Map adjustment, we'd end up with a photo made up of reds and purples. Download this tutorial as a print-ready PDF! Step 1: Reset Your Foreground And Background Colorsīy default, Photoshop's Gradient Map adjustment uses a gradient that's based on our current Foreground and Background colors. ![]()
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