Freelance Photographer
Seeing things differently
A taker of Photographs - A creator of images

Graduated filter...

Have you ever taken a photograph which has little or no detail in the sky and wished you'd had a graduated filter handy, well here's a way putting that right in Photoshop... I will endeavour to demonstrate this very simple technique in ten easy steps, which can easily be applied to any digital photo... The hue, saturation and lightness of the filter can adjusted to suit the image you are working on... Open your image in Photoshop like this one and save it under a new name to avoid overwriting the original file...

1... Create a new layer by clicking on the Layers tab (F7 key will bring the layers pallet up)... Click on the Create a new layer Icon at the bottom near the dustbin icon...

2... Reset the pallets default colours by pressing the 'D' key...
3... Now select the Gradient Tool from the tools pallet or press the 'G' key, if that brings up the paint bucket press the Shift key + 'G' key to toggle between the two...
4... Now make the following selections from the new toolbar as shown below...

Blue cuffed pointers... Click on the Gradient picker and select the foreground to transparent option...

Yellow cuffed pointer... Select the Linear Gradient option...
5... With the gradient fill tool selected click on the top of the image while holding down the shift key and drag the cursor about a quarter of the way down the sky area... This will create a short dark grad like the one shown on the right...
6... Now press the 'Ctrl + T' keys to enable free transform and drag the gradient down to where you want, as in the image below...

7... Click on the layers pallet and alter the opacity of the layer to suit the image as shown below...

8... Now take a large soft edged eraser and erase any visible joining lines between the background and the gradient filter... You should end up with an effect like the image on the right...
9... If you aren't happy with the colour of the gradient hold down the 'Ctrl + U' keys to bring up the hue and saturation window...
10... Check the colorize box near the bottom right... You can then adjust the Hue, Saturation and lightness sliders to alter the colour and density of the graduated filter... The two images below were produced by moving the sliders to create a blue and a tobacco effect filter...
If you wish you can also use the Gaussian blur filter on layer one to soften the effect...