04 Change the tones
The Gradient Editor will let you change more than this, though. Let’s say our first example looks fine in terms of colour but has come out too dark. This can happen if you choose too dark a colour for your middle color stop in the gradient.
There is an easier fix for this than changing the colour – if you drag the middle colour stop to the left in the Gradient Editor, the picture becomes lighter and if you drag it to the right it becomes darker.
05 Add a tint
Finally, not all gradient map adjustments have to produce a monochromatic image! All I’ve done here is to adjust the opacity of the sepia gradient map layer I’ve just created. An opacity of 75% is just about right to give my original image a sepia tint that overlays the original colours rather than replacing them.
Here’s the result. It’s given this colour picture a nice old-style look, yet it’s an effect you can apply in less than a minute and because it’s on an adjustment layer you can edit and re-edit it as many times as you like – the original image remains untouched on the layer below.
See also
More Photoshop Elements tutorials
