Color Grading Your Photos In Photoshop

This video tutorial by portrait photographer Nathaniel Dodson (from the website tutvid) takes a look at color grading in Photoshop.

This video is also part of a longer video series that Dodson is making describing his retouch process.

What Dodson shows is how to control the curve adjustment layer and play with the different color channels by adding points and very carefully controlling the colors. By adding a color adjustment layer you are also faced with the option to change the highlights, midtones and shadows for all the colors (again be careful – too much can really make your image look unnatural).

The final method to color grade is by using a gradient map – we select the color that we want to go to the darkest pixels and the shadows and set the blending layer to soft light.

Do remember to reduce the contrast if you use this method because it tends to increase the contrast (sometimes a bit too much).

You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section. You can also check Dodson’s previous videos here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.