Step 5: Change The Blend Mode Of The Gradient Map Layer To "Overlay"

We've added our Gradient Map adjustment layer and successfully edited the colors that are being mapped to our sunset photo using Photoshop's Gradient Editor. The only problem now is that the colors are much too strong. There's two things we can do to fix that, and we're going to be combining both of them to give us complete control over the final result.

First, we need to change the blend mode of the Gradient Map adjustment layer. If we look in our Layers palette, we can see that we now have two layers - the Background layer which contains our photo and the Gradient Map adjustment layer above it. Make sure you have the Gradient Map layer selected, then go up to the blend mode option in the top left corner of the Layers palette, click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the word "Normal", and select Overlay from the list of blend modes that appears:

If you recall from our recent tutorial on Photoshop's Five Essential Layer Blend Modes, the Overlay blend mode is part of the Contrast group of blend modes, and one of it primary purposes is to boost the contrast in an image, making light areas lighter and dark areas darker. If we look at our image now, we can see that the contrast has definitely been increased. The reds, oranges and yellows from our gradient are blending in better with the photo at this point, but the colors are still much too intense:

Step 6: Lower The Opacity Of The Gradient Map Layer

To reduce the intensity of the colors so it looks more like a sunset and less like a nuclear explosion, all we need to do is lower the opacity of the Gradient Map layer. The Opacity option is located at the top of the Layers palette, directly to the right of the blend mode option. I'm going to lower my opacity all the way down to 40%. You may need to set yours to a different value depending on your image:

Once you've lowered the opacity of the adjustment layer to fine-tune the result, you're done! Here's my original image once again for comparison:

And here is our final "warm, golden sunset" result:

And there we have it!

Download this tutorial as an easy to read, ready to print PDF eBook!

Or keep up-to-date with all of our latest free Adobe Photoshop tutorials by subscribing to our RSS feed!