The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

Pro tricks for mastering colour

The Professional Photoshop Book 23

USE MULTIPLE MAPS

Aaron Campbell (www.aaroncampbell.ca) likes to

layer up his gradient maps to establish atmosphere

in his work using colour. He explains: “In most of my

pieces I use a combination of around two to four

gradient maps on a variety of blend modes and

adjust percentages to add just the right amount of

each colour to my piece. This makes it so any colour

I add to my image that’s under the gradient maps

will automatically be blended into the scene and will

only need minor tweaking.”

“This makes it easy for me to adjust the

intensity of each gradient map that’s contributing

to the atmosphere, and makes it easy for me to

change the mood of the piece just by changing

the gradient map’s colour rather than going

through and changing each layer’s or object’s

colour one by one. You can also lower the

opacity of the whole folder if you want to lower

your custom atmosphere all together. I find this

to be a simple but effective way to tinker.”

For Campbell, choosing the right colour is

generally a matter of instinct, albeit one that has

been honed through years of experience. For

instance, he notes, “most images that have a

modern or futuristic feel to them most commonly

have light, clean and cooler colours with everything

feeling very smooth, while retro or nostalgic images

have dusty, warm and dark colours, usually with

washed out darks. The tools in Photoshop really

make these colour palettes very easy to achieve.”

JON WESTWOOD EXPLAINS THE POWER OF A GRADIENT MAP ADJUSTMENT LA YER, WHICH

CAN APPLY A COLOUR GRADUATION TO THE VALUE OF YOUR IMAGE

GRADIENT MAP ADJUSTMENTS

01

SET YOUR SCENE

“The idea here is to try a find a way of

making background scenes with a very quick

turnaround time, so I transformed images from

pictures I took into a loosely painted

environment. While value is important, original

colours don’t play a role in the final image since

they will be defined by the gradient map, so I

don’t need to worry about the mismatched

colours in the composition.”

02

APPLY THE MAP

“The gradient map then gets applied to

flatten and isolate the tones and colours of the

original image. Everything below the Gradient

Map adjustment layer will be affected by the

adjustment and everything above it will be

excluded. What sets it apart from desaturating

and recolouring an image is its ability to apply

different colours to chosen values and manipulate

the colour gradation between those values.”

03

ADJUST YOUR IMAGE

“Now you can finish the composition with

some miscellaneous colour and value

adjustments that won’t be affected by the gradient

layer (in this case, a Hue/Saturation change, a

little bit more colouring on the ground, and some

noise to blend brush strokes).”

© Jon Westwood

©

Aaron

Cam

pbell

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