Hello, I'm Helen Bradley.
Welcome to this video tutorial.
In this tutorial I'm going to show you how you can work with some transparent gradients
in Photoshop to get effects that you may not otherwise believe that you can achieve.
Before we get started with this tutorial let's have a look and see what it is that we're
trying to achieve.
This is an image of a tram in San Francisco along the Embarcadero and this is the original
and this is the edited image.
And what I've done is added a vignette to the image using a Gray to Transparent gradient
and I'm going to show you why those sorts of gradients are particularly handy.
There's also another effect that we're going to create here with a Difference Cloud effect
and what I've done is built up the layers here again using color to transparent gradient.
So we'll see how to create that effect as well.
But let's start with our image of San Francisco tram.
I'm going to just trash that layer and now let's see how we would achieve that effect.
I'm going to right click on the background layer and duplicate this layer so I've two
versions of the image.
And I'm going to set the Blend mode for this topmost layer to Multiply because that darkens
the image.
So that's effectively the darkening that I'm going to use for my vignette.
But I don't want it in the middle of the image so I'm going to add a mask to this top layer
by clicking on the top layer and click the Add Layer Mask icon at the foot of the Layers
palette.
That adds a white filled mask.
I'm going to set black as my foreground color, make sure my mask is selected and press Alt
Backspace on the PC, Option Delete on the Mac.
And that fills the mask with black effectively removing the effect of adding that duplicate
layer in Multiply Blend mode.
So we're sort of back to square one.
But what I want to do is to use gray or a sort of white color here to build back in
the vignette and I'm going to do that using a gradient.
So I'm going to click on the Gradient tool here and up here in the top corner of the
Tool options bar I get a selector for my gradient.
Now there's always a Foreground to Background gradient and there's always a Black and White
one and there's always here a Foreground to Transparent one.
And you might be tempted to use the Black to White gradient.
I'm going to select it now and show you why you wouldn't use it.
This is a Black to White gradient so if for example I set it to Radial it will do as it
says and drop in a Black to White gradient.
But whenever I add another one of these gradients you can see that it's replacing the existing
one.
So I'm not getting them adding to each other.
They're doing a straight out replacement.
Let's just go back to filling that with black and let's see how different it is if I use
the Black or Foreground to Transparent gradient.
I'm going to click on that and this time let's make the foreground color white so I'm just
going to press D to reset the default colors.
So this gradient is still Foreground to Transparent.
It's just that foreground is now white so it's working White to Transparent.
Now let's see what happens with the mask selected when I drop in these Radial gradients.
See what's happening here in the mask preview here you can see that we're actually adding
multiple gradients.
These gradients are sort of accumulative because what we're doing is we're dropping in White
to Transparent instead of White to Black so they're only filling up in the area that is
white through to where the transparency starts and then nothing else is being added.
So we can add this gradient in in ways that we can't do if we're using a Black to White
gradient.
Ok, let's go back and refill this gradient here with black and I'm going to this time
use the Linear gradient.
I'm going to make sure that white is my color and now I can just come in and start building
in the gradient where I want it to be.
And you can see that because this layer is a Multiply Blend mode layer this is adding
the vignette back in.
But I can be really careful about where I want this vignette to be and I can put it
exactly where I want it and nowhere that I don't want it because we're building this
mask up using a White to Transparent gradient instead of a White to Black gradient.
So you can see how that would work.
Now let's go to a new file.
So I'm just going to choose File, New.
We're just going to have a look at this effect where we're actually painting on layers this
way.
So now I'm going to add a Difference Cloud.
Now I just wanted to show you something about the Difference Cloud filter that I discovered
this morning that I didn't know before and it really makes sense.
I'm going to go to Filter, Render and Difference Clouds and you'll see that these are yellow.
Now the reason why they're yellow is because blue is the foreground color.
If we made the foreground color for example green and then go back and add Difference
Clouds in, I'm just pressing Alt Command Z to undo that, let's just go back and add Difference
Clouds this time they're going to be a sort of magenta color.
And the reason is because they're a Difference Cloud.
They're going to be the color opposite of the color that you have selected here.
So now if we set it to black and white, again I'm going to undo this and now if we do Difference
Clouds they're going to be black and white clouds because black and white are the opposite
of each other.
So now let's add a brand new layer and I'm going to start painting in color.
So let's just go and get some color.
Let's go and get a blue here as our foreground color.
I'm going to set the Blend mode of this new layer to Color.
I'm going to select my Gradient tool and this time I'm going to use the Radial gradient
and again it will be preset to the option that I chose last time which is this Foreground
to Transparent.
Now when I start adding color you'll see that because this is a Color blend layer we're
just colorizing the layer underneath.
So let's add another layer, again with Color.
Again let's go and get a color to use.
So I'm going to choose a sort of dark purple here.
And I'm still painting with this gradient so what we're doing is colorizing the layer
underneath but we're building it up with mini gradients.
Because we're using a Foreground to Transparent color anywhere where the gradient is not applied
will be transparent.
Now the difference would be let's go and get a Foreground to White gradient and let's apply
that.
And that would just slop a gradient right in the middle of it.
Anytime I go to drag another gradient out it's totally replaced.
This is not the kind of tools that we want in this situation.
What I want to do to color this background in an attractive way is to be using this Foreground
to Transparent gradient so that I can get an interesting effect in the work that I'm
doing.
So I'm Helen Bradley.
Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial.
Look out for more of my video tutorials on this channel.
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Visit my website at Projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on Photoshop, Lightroom,
Illustrator and a whole lot more.