How to Use Photoshop Photographic Toning Gradient Presets for Amazing Skin Tones

Photoshop Photographic Toning

Photoshop Photographic Toning Gradient Presets are one of the easiest ways to get amazing skin tones. A quick way to color grade using a legacy gradient preset that is sometimes hidden.

Today we’re going to look at how to use Photoshop photographic toning gradient presets. We’ll see how to get them into the gradient editor and along with blending modes, get amazing skin tones. So we’re going to apply a gradient map to this photo. But first, if you’ve never use photographic toning, it’s a good chance that it is not in your gradients.

How to Find Missing Photographic Toning Gradients.

So to check for that, you come up to window gradients. In here, you look in your gradients window and you should see a group called Legacy Gradients. If you do not, you need to add that it may be already there if you’ve used it before in some other version of Photoshop. So to add your photographic toning gradients come up to the menu on the right and come down to legacy gradients.

And now you have a group here called Legacy Gradients Twirl this down and down here you’re going to come to something called photographic toning. So these are the gradient maps that we’re going to be using in this tutorial. So now I’m just going to duplicate my background and I’m going to come down here to the bottom of the Layers panel and I’m going to choose gradient map.

First Example of using Photographic Toning Gradient Presets

So first I’m going to change my blending mode to soft light and drop my opacity down to, say, 80 for right now. I’m going to double-click on a gradient map. And here’s a gradient editor and slide down to where it says legacy gradient. In down further, I’m going to twirl this out where says photographic toning. And now here I can click on any of these gradients and I can instantly see the result.

And I lower the opacity because I know that I’m not going to use this full strength but you can sample any of these to see would you like any of these that you feel is the look you’re going for. I’m going for a warm look in this case. And so I’ve selected gold 2 I’m going to keep everything here the same, the gradient type solid.

You could see the gradient map down here on the left is how the tones are mapped in the shadow. And on the right here is how the tones are mapped in the highlights here in the middle, it is your mid-tones and say, OK. I’m going to close my properties and I’ll come down to the opacity and I’m going to bring that down a little bit more.

It’s a little bit too strong. So let’s say around 40. And here’s the before. Here’s the after. Other controls you have. If you want to remove some of that effect of the gradient from the shadows or highlight, just double click on your layer, and here’s your layer style you can adjust your underline layer so you don’t want this effect in your shadows and that’s totally up to you.

In this case, this is fine. I’ll say, OK, if you want to refine further and create a new layer and create a stamp visible layer, shift+option+command+E and you can come up, to filter camera raw filter and you can change things like temperature if you want to make it warmer and say, OK, and for this example, there’s the before and there is the after.

Second Example of using Photographic Toning Gradient Presets

These photographic toning gradients, they are presets that come with Photoshop. They’re really great for color grading and they can be a starting point, or you can use it completely. You can down to the bottom of the layers panel add another gradient map and change my blend mode to soft light.

And again, I’m going to bring down my opacity to around 80. Click on my gradient map. Here is a gradient editor. We already added the legacy gradients and twirl that down to photographic toning. In here you can choose which of these you think you want depending on the effect that you want. A gold look there. That’s a nice look and I think I’m going to go with Sepia Antique.

I say OK and I close my gradient map and come down here to my opacity bring that down to 64. So there is the before and there’s the after. Again if I double click on my layer, here’s my layer style and I can remove some of that effect from the shadows you can see that it is coming out of the shadows now we need to feather that effect a little bit.

We’ll hold alt and split this indicator right here. So the effect is not affecting the shadows. We can also do that if we need to. On the highlights, I’m just going to say, OK, there’s the before and there’s the after.

Third Example of using Photographic Toning Gradient Presets

So we’re able to get these amazing skin tones, these photographic toning presets are going to work with any skin tone and come down here to the Layers panel, add a gradient map, change my blend mode to soft light.

You can experiment with your blend modes, and change it to anything you like. I’m choosing soft light I think it has a nice mellow effect. I’m going to change my opacity to something like 80 again just as a starter. Click on my gradient map. Here in the center is my gradient editor. Slide down to the legacy gradients twirl the photographic toning down and go through these and see what I like.

Gold, selenium, one gold, copper looks good. Let’s choose gold copper. We’ll say, OK, close my properties. And again, if I don’t want gold copper in the shadows, double click on my gradient map. Layer change to blend-if on my underline layer, hold alt or option, and split that. Just to take a little bit of that out of my shadows and say OK, and now I can decide how much I want to change my opacity, take it all the way down, say something like 50%, there’s two before and there’s two after a quick way to do color grading and get amazing skin tones.

See my photography website here ➡️ https://www.charlescabreraphotography.com

Read the previous blog article here ➡️. How To Change Day Into Night In Photoshop