The Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital photographers part 21 is full-color, graphically rich, and contains project-based examples of every key step in the digital photography process. Integrating all the newest features of Photoshop CS5 into the book’s workflow, Scott shows readers how to work with their images like a pro, from importing to organization to correction to output. In addition to fully updating the book for CS5, Scott has also added a brand new chapter, which lets readers in on his entire, personal post-processing workflow by incorporating his popular 7-Point System into this book | The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Five Once you re back at the Gradient Editor and your color stop is now gray you can drag that middle gray stop around to adjust the tone of your image as shown here . What s weird is you drag the opposite way that the gradient shows. For example to darken the photo you drag to the right toward the white end of the gradient and to lighten the photo you drag left toward the dark end. Freaky I know. One other thing unlike almost every other slider in all of Photoshop as you drag that color stop you do not get a live preview of what s happening you have to release the mouse button and then it shows you the results of your dragging. Click OK and you re done. 0 O B 16-7 Gradient Map 1. RGB 8 Step Six Here s one of the two variations I talked about in the introduction for this technique just go to the Layers panel and lower the Opacity of your Gradient Map adjustment layer to 70 as shown here . This bleeds back in a little of the color and gives a really nice subtle wash effect compare this slightly-colored photo with the full-color photo in Step One and you ll see what I mean. It s kinda nice isn t it . Okay now raise it back up to 100 for the second variation which is also a second version of your B W conversion. Continued How to Create Stunning B W Images Chapter 7 181 The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Seven For this version go to the Layers panel and click on the Background layer which is still in color. If you remove the color from that Background layer you d get a somewhat different conversion right Right So once you ve clicked on the Background layer press Command-Shift-U PC Ctrl-Shift-U which is the shortcut for the Desaturate command it s found under the Image menu under Adjustments . This removes the color and gives you a different look although the change is fairly subtle with this photo with some photos it s pretty dramatic it just depends on the photo . But either way
