Gradient Map vs Gradient fill – What is the Difference? 2021

Gradient Map vs Gradient fill. Today I’m going to explain the difference between Gradient Maps, Gradient Fill, and the Gradient Tool. I’ll help you understand these differences so you can make your own choices when to use them in creative ways. All 3, Gradient Maps, Gradient Fill, and the Gradient Tool are fun to use in Photoshop.

Gradient Map vs Gradient fill

Today, I’m going to explain the difference between gradient maps, gradient fill, the gradient tool. I’ll help you to understand these differences so that you can make your own choices when to use them creatively.

The Gradient Tool

Going to start out with the gradient tool first. Now, the gradient tool is usually on your toolbar here on the left, or you can hit G on your keyboard. And up at the top of the menu bar. You see all the options for the gradient tool. So right away, the main thing with the gradient tool is you actually draw your own gradient. And when using the gradient to, it’s best to draw your gradients on a new layer.

So I’m going to make a new layer above my background layer. And this is so I can have more control over the gradient. I can make changes easier. It’s going to be non-destructive. And we’re not going to make our gradients over the background layer. So up here at the top of the toolbar, if I click on this arrow, here comes the gradient picker. You know, I’m going to make sure that I am on the foreground to transparent. And also, if you click right here in the middle of this gradient, you’ll get the gradient editor. We’ll talk about this later.

But you have a couple of gradient settings here. The first one being the linear gradient. And the next one being the radial gradient. You probably use those two the most. You have your blend modes up here you can use. But since we’re working on a blank layer over here, we can use all these blend modes over here. So it’s another way to control the gradient and our color picker over here on the lower left. If I hit D it’s set my foreground color to black in my background, color to white.

And if I just want a simple gradient, click on the left side here and I’m going to draw a line holding my shift key down. So it’s a straight line and let go. Because I have my foreground color black. It is creating a dark gradient going from my foreground color, which is black to transparent. And of course, you’re drawing your own gradient. You can come from the top, come from either side hold the shift key down. Let go.

If you click this reverse right here, it’s going to reverse your gradient. You watch the gradient if I click reverse. And then I draw again. It reversed it. It went from transparent to my foreground color. That’s what reverse is. And dither if it’s checked like the help says up here, it will reduce banding and also make the transitions more natural. And just a quick example here. If I want to add a little bit more definition to this sky, I could sample a color, and I’ll make that my foreground, color it G for my gradient tool.

And I still have the foreground transparent gradient in use. I can hold my shift key down and just drag all the way down. Now, this layer, I can change the blend mode. I’ll change it to something like multiply. If I need to bring the sky up a little bit, I can hit command+T. And just raise it up like that. So it’s just affecting the top part of my sky. Click the checkmark, there’s before and after. So the main takeaway about the gradient tool, is that you can draw your own gradient coming from any angle. You can still use colors and you can use blend modes to get the effect you want.

The Gradient Fill Adjustment Layer

The next option for gradient is the gradient fill adjustment layer down here in the bottom of the layers panel. I’ll come up to gradient fill. Now right away a tip. If you see your gradient fill adjustment, come up with a color like this. Well, it’s taking on the color swatch right here on the bottom left here.

Before you start don’t forget your default colors and then come to the bottom of your layers panel and select gradient fill. Now you have a gradient that is drawn for you, but it’s just like Photoshop just dumped that color onto your image. So like the gradient tool, you can use the gradient picker or you can click right here in the middle and get the gradient editor.

And let’s change the color. You click right here on the left-hand side. This color stop down. Now you can change the color and I kind of liked that orange that came up earlier. I’ll select that and say OK and say OK again. Now, with the gradient fill, you have all the options you had with a gradient tool you can set your style to linear or radial. Go with linear. And you can change the angle of the gradient by rotating. If you hold down the shift. You can change this by 15 degrees each time.

So you don’t have to redraw your gradient every time you want to change the angle. You just use this angle option right here. And I would change the angle to minus 90 degrees. So it’s on top. Now scale is going to change the size of the gradient. You can go from a scale of one and just increase it. And you can see the gradient changing and we’ll leave it there.

If want I can click on the image and move the gradient up or down. Do you see that? And I’m going to check dither to reduce banding. I could have used reverse. You see reverse acts the same way it did for the gradient tool. I’ll leave it there. So again, what’s really great about the gradient fill is you click in here. You get the gradient editor. You can always click on one of the stops and come down here to this colored box and change your color. Now, if I say, OK.

Now I can come in on my gradient fill layer. I can change my blend mode to a variety of different things. I can try. And if I come down here to overlay or soft light, I choose that there’s a before and after. And if I think there is too much of an effect, I can change the capacity of the layer and I could use the gradient tool in conjunction with this. If I click on my gradient fill layer mask, come over to my gradient tool or hit G. Make sure that I’m on foreground to transparent in my gradient picker and make sure my gradient fill layer mask is highlighted and hold down my shift key and from the bottom.

And so what that did, it hid the effect on the lower part of this image. So just to show you, you can use both these tools together. So don’t forget, when you use the gradient, fill its going to use color swatch settings. And so when you first bring up the adjustment layer, it’s going to put that color across your whole image. So tip one, make sure that you have your default colors for your swatch already set. It’s going to draw a gradient for you.

You’re going to be able to change the color of that gradient in the gradient fill dialog. Make sure that your foreground to transparent that way, you only need one color, which is a good way to start. And you can use the gradient tool on the gradient fill layer mask to remove the effect on a certain area of the image that you don’t want.

The Gradient Map Adjustment Layer

Let’s see how a gradient map works. Start off. Make sure that your color swatch over here is set to its default colors. And so now in the layers panel select gradient map. And you notice that the image is in black and white, which could be a good place to start if you are going to do some black and white editing.

So a gradient map maps out the color value in our image to the tone or the color that we want to set it to. So if we click in the middle here, we get our gradient editor. And so the gradient map actually maps out the tonal values in image to the gradient that we decide.

In this case, we chose black and white. The darker areas of the image will be black and the lightest areas will be white. So when you select a gradient, you have your shadows on the left. You have your mid tones in the center here. Your highlight over here on the right. So the gradient map maps all your colors across your shadows, mid-tones and highlights.

So now if I want to choose any of these colors here in the, say something to the purples. You really want to keep in mind that you want the shadows, a darker color and the highlights lighter. And you can also click on any of these areas and change the colors. I can click on this stop over here. Now I’m going to change my highlight colors. If I click down here at the bottom of this gradient, I’ve created basically another point where I can change that color also. For now, I’ll just use two colors and I’ll say, OK.

I can come over here to my gradient map adjustment layer and change my blend modes. And as soon as I do that, I get a lot of different effects. And I’ll choose soft light. And I think this effect is a little too strong. So I’ll bring it down to like 70ish.

And again, I can use my gradient tool. And if I’m on the layer mask where the gradient map G for my gradient tool, I have foreground to transparent selected as my gradient. And say I want to get rid of some of this redness in the ground here. I can hold down my shift key and draw straight up. Say something like that.

So again, I could use a gradient tool in conjunction with my gradient map. So it takes away from the gradient map. Is that what it does is it maps your gradient? However many colors you choose. It will map them to your shadows, your mid-tones, and your highlights.

Read the previous blog article here ▶️ Best TikTok Premiere Pro Export Settings – How to Edit, Export & Upload High Quality Videos – 2021

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