The gradient tool in Photoshop is so fun. When I was trying to learn to how to use the gradient tool I couldn’t figure it out, I thought this is so dumb! Well, a lot of tutorials forget one basic step that makes all the difference and I’m going to include it.

1. Open your image and evaluate it. If  the skin looks dark and grey I will do my brightness/contrast and/or levels adjustments here.

2. For Speed, I ran my Reveal action on this image so now we have this.

3. We are going to add a gradient map by going to Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. And what do you get? Devil Baby! Oops! this is why for so long the gradient thing eluded me.

4. You can fix this by clicking on the box on the bottom and hit reverse to change the effect so it looks right (but you don’t want to that every time).

5. While I have nothing bad to say about devil babies or pagan babies in general (all religions are wlecomed here). I don’t want a devil baby today. To get rid of this adjustment Edit at the top and then Step Backward.
So to fix this we are going to first a) change our color boxes (foreground and background) on the bottom of the tool bar to black on top and white on the bottom. Next, select your gradient tool (with the red arrow in the middle) and third click on the top left little black to white box (the next red arrow). Here you can choose what kind of gradient you want. Choose the third background to foreground. This will give more options than just choosing black and white.

4. Now we are going to step 3 again and look no Devil-Baby!

5. You can be creative and pick your own colors for a gradient map. so say you’re Irish and you want to celebrate the Ides of March. Walloa! (I didn’t say it would look good). Obviously you’ll need to do some experimenting on your own.

6. My Pro Black and White action uses a graident tool and after using it, it would look like this. You can purchase this action and others like it in the Store. Good luck and have fun!