- Bonjour mesdames and messieurs.
In this video I want to show you how to use
the gradient tool.
There is a lot more to it I think.
I know a lot of photographers don't know a few
of the techniques I'm gonna show you and you could be
missing out on something big,
because the grading tool is one
of the most powerful tools in Lightroom.
And it's almost the reason why I got in Lightroom
on the first place.
So stay till the end.
I'm gonna give you five tricks,
which are amazing on using the gradient tool.
The last one is the best one.
Stay all the way. Let's go.
It's gonna be really quick.
(dramatic vocalizing)
We have this photo of La Maison Rose,
a beautiful restaurant in Paris,
and we're gonna do a very quick retouching on it.
I'm just gonna open the shadows, bring down the highlights.
I'm gonna crush the blacks.
I'm gonna crush the whites.
I'm gonna add some magenta. I'm gonna warm it.
And here's the trick.
I'm gonna do what we call a local white balance.
So I'm gonna warm it up a little bit
and you see how the sky now becomes gray?
I don't like gray sky.
I like blue sky, not gray sky,
but I'm gonna do that because I want the rest of the city
to be more warm.
Okay?
I just want to crop it because I don't like that crop.
But first before I crop it, what I want to do,
what I want to do is go to vertical
and make it just a bit more straight.
And then I'm just gonna crop out the car.
Okay. I'm gonna add more contrast.
This is gonna give us a base to work with.
So check it out.
So trick number one is the basic use
of the gradient filter.
You click here and double click here on effect
to put everything down to zero.
And I'm gonna click and drag and let's say,
I'm gonna lower the exposure.
Okay.
So now I'm lowering the exposure and you see that value
of minus .60?
That value is gonna go from
the top of the photo to the first line.
And then it's gonna go on a gradient from the first line
to the last line, meaning I can have a short gradient.
Let me show you.
So if I do never,
you can see it only darkens the top of the sky.
Or I can go on Auto, or I can make a big gradient
and it's gonna be much longer okay?
Now, trick number two is you could actually
use more than one slider at a time.
For example, on this one,
I want to lower the blue because I want to get my blue back
that was in the original RAW file,
but then I don't like that to tree is so dark
and that the whole restaurant is so dark.
So I'm gonna open the shadows a little bit
at the same time.
And I might boost the highlights a little bit
at the same time, just to highlight, just a little tiny bit.
So check it out.
Before and you have a little square, before, after.
It's good. It's better.
I opened the shadows so now that it's not as dark,
here on the tree and the restaurant,
but it's still too dark.
That brings me to trick number three, use a luminance mask.
And I did a full video on this.
And basically the way it works is you have Range Mask off.
You can go to luminance.
And if you hold down the Option Key on your keyboard,
if you're on a Mac or the Alt key on Windows
and you move this,
it's gonna create a mask and all the mask work in
Lightroom and Photoshop and the whole world of computers
by black conceals, white reveals.
So what are we revealing?
We are revealing the gradient mask.
So if I move this all the way to the right,
I'm gonna overdo it,
you see the mask is now only, it's only white on the sky
and not on the house.
So check it out.
Look at this. Before, after, before, after, before, after.
What's happening is I'm relighting the house.
The problem's that if you do it too much,
it's gonna create some halos around the house.
And I don't want halos.
I think halos is one of the biggest mistake I see people do
when they retouch a photo.
I see it all the time.
And so I have an association against halos
and that's what I'm trained to do, is avoid halos.
By the way, guys,
if you like this content, please give me a little like,
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I'm trying to make one to two videos per week
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Leave me a comment.
Tell me what you would like to learn on Photoshop,
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techniques on taking photos,
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Let me know.
I read all your comments.
All right. So now, I'm not gonna be so much.
I'm gonna do it a little bit,
but I want to show you another way,
which brings me to my tip number four,
which is the hidden brush tool.
Okay?
This is a brush tool, but this is also a brush tool.
If you click on that, you come to a different brush, okay?
Which has three settings, A, B and erase.
In my case, I want to erase the effect
of the gradient filter on the trees and on the house.
So I'm gonna click on erase and you see now my mouse,
sorry, and you see that my circle has got a little minus.
That means it's an eraser.
By the way,
you can make bigger or smaller by holding the middle mouse
button on your brush.
So now I got a big eraser.
Now the trick is for now,
we put Auto mask off and we get the flow around 60.
And if you want to see what you're doing,
you can click here on Show Selected Mask Overly.
And that's gonna show you in red the effect of the mask.
And you can see it's very strong still on the house.
It's very strong on the tree.
So I'm gonna make a big brush.
And as long as I'm not close to the border,
I'm gonna basically erase,
I can actually go flow a 100% when I'm here.
It doesn't matter actually here,
when I'm far away from the borders, okay, I can go a 100%.
So I'm erasing with the mask,
what the gradient mask is doing.
But when it comes to,
I can make this smaller.
When it comes to the border, again,
I'm trying to avoid halos, right?
Remember the association against halos around the world,
which I'm the president.
Just kidding.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put Auto Mask on,
well, let me show you first.
So let's take,
let's say that I go here and by mistake I do something like
this and I take this out.
You see, now I have a little halo.
So what I can do is can go
back to A and I can just repaint this, okay?
And go back to your erase.
And this time I'm not gonna use
a Show Selected Mask Overlay.
I'm gonna take a big brush.
I'm gonna put Auto Mask on,
and I only do this for the border.
And all you have to do is make sure that the minus
of the eraser is on the, on the house.
And I'm gonna,
you erase the effect of the gradient on the house,
but not on the sky.
And I'm doing it,
that's why I'm actually gonna lower the flow.
Because if I, if you put the flow at 100,
often you get halos, especially with trees like that.
So the idea is you're erasing a bit less
and I'm doing this on the border.
You just have to make sure that the minus is always
on the tree or on the house, never on the sky.
If you do it on the sky, it's gonna erase the sky.
So Command + Z to undo.
You don't want that. Okay.
It's gonna create a halo.
Hello.
Okay. I can do it here.
And now let's see here. Show Mask Overlay.
You can see it's a, well,
maybe let's do it here a little more.
You can see,
there's almost a lot less red on
a lot less reds on the tree.
Okay.
And that's kind of cool.
So let's see how it looks like this.
And the, the idea is this. Before, after.
Now I'm only darkening the sky and not,
and not just house and not the tree,
which is a lot more natural.
And by the way,
this is one of my most liked photo last year on Instagram.
I think I added a bit more contrast, and a bit more magenta.
But voila.
So that's, I hope this is some stuff you,
you know, I hope you, you learn a thing or two.
Now I got a really cool video about how to use a brush tool.
It's starting right now. Check it out.
I'm sure there's a few things you don't know
about the brush that I'm gonna show you.
Don't miss out. Check it out.
It's starting now.