handy at giving us an initial idea of the direction the dark to light tones we
will select should be going in.
We are going to set ten points on the gradient bar — with colors picked
directly from our image — going from darkest to lightest. First, click on the
black point of the gradient and hover over the image; you should see the
Eyedropper tool. Locate the very darkest point of your image and click; if it
is black or very close to black, you won’t see much change in your gradient
map. Now click just below the gradient bar, a small space away from the
gradient point you just changed, to add a new gradient point.
Don’t worry about the distance between the points at this stage; we can
change this at the end. Hover over your image again, select the next
darkest area, and click. Continue with this process, adding progressively
lighter points to the gradient bar all the way down to the white point,
changing that to the lightest color in your image. You should aim to have
ten points in total, although a few more or less is fine. Try to space out the
points evenly before pressing OK.