Learn How to Add Impact to Your Photos by Using the Gradient Tool

You Can Use The Gradient Tool To Add Impact To Your Photos. Here’s How!

Many photographers wonder why there is a big difference between their landscape photos and others while the technique and gear are almost the same.

The reason lies behind the photo processing and editing process. In fact, many professional photographers do edit their photos to add more impact to them.

One of those editing actions is using the gradient tool of the photo editing software which turns their photos to more beautiful ones.

Read through this great tutorial, check out the images and let us know how you add impact to your photos!!

Getting the most out of your landscape photos has never been easier for photographers.

Using the digital tools available today, well-exposed and well-composed original pictures can turn into amazing photographs with a few clicks of a mouse. One of the most valuable tools is the gradient tool, found in most image editing software.

Learn how to use the gradient tool to add impact to your photos.

On snow covered Chocorua Lake, a lone red bob house, or ice fishing shack, sits under the pastel pink and purple early mornig sky. Off in the distance, image right, Mt. Chocorua stands tall with its snow covered summit catching the first hints of pink alpenglow as the sun crests the horizon.
On snow covered Chocorua Lake, a lone red bob house, or ice fishing shack, sits under the pastel pink and purple early mornig sky. Off in the distance, image right, Mt. Chocorua stands tall with its snow covered summit catching the first hints of pink alpenglow as the sun crests the horizon.

The gradient tool is one of the handiest and simplest tools you can use to quickly add impact to your landscape photographs. Before the advent of digital photography, the only way to balance the usually much brighter sky in a landscape photograph with the darker foreground was through the use of a graduated neutral density filter placed over the camera lens while you’re out in the field. Now, however, this exposure balancing act can easily be duplicated in the computer.

The photo above shows a nice winter scene with the early morning sky a beautiful pastel pink and purple. This is not what the original capture looked like. Even though the photo was properly exposed, with no over-exposed areas (as indicated by the histogram on the back of the camera), the sky looked washed out, showing only a hint of the color in the top photo. As you can see in the screenshot below, a side-by-side comparison in Lightroom of the original photo and the same photo enhanced with only the use of the gradient tool, that one tool can make all the difference in the world.

16b-Add-Impact-By-Gradient-Tool

It took me all of 15-20 seconds to change this photo from blah, to something more.

Using the Gradient tool in Lightroom

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Read the full article at Craftsy.com and learn all the steps about using the gradient tool:

How to Use the Gradient Tool to Add Impact to Photos

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Article Source: How to Use the Gradient Tool to Add Impact to Photos

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