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[ 83 ]In the Gradient Editor, if you
move the blend points, called stops
(or position markers) below the gradi-
ent bar, you can visually compress the
blending range to target specific low
frequencies in an image. This is the
same as increasing tonal contrast in
an image, but instead of the contrast
being applied equally from both ends
of the tonal spectrum, we can decide
where to compress tones by moving
the stops in the Gradient Editor. Note:
When a color stop is active, you’ll see
a little hollow diamond appear below
the gradient bar between stops. This
is the color midpoint between two
stops. You can move the midpoint to
create harder transitions in the gradi-
ent, as we did here.
What makes this such a unique
technique is that the Gradient Editor
gives us the ability to manipulate the
gradient in a way that we can target
both the high end and the low end
of the tonal range at the same time.
We can add extra stops to the Gra-
dient Map by clicking just below the
gradient bar, and now we can have
white representing the middle tones
and red representing both ends of the
spectrum. Tip: To change the color of
a stop, simply double-click it to open
the Color Picker.
What’s so interesting about this
technique is the red is now “blocking”
the bright tones, such as the flowing
water of the river, as well as the dark
tones of the image. We don’t have
any feature in Photoshop that can
look at multiple tones with this level
of granularity at the same time, while
also excluding any other tones that
we dictate to the program through a
bracketing-like control.