Did you know that Photoshop has a lot of photographic toning presets made for you already? Adobe hired a photographer to create 39 gradient map presets specifically for photographs. And just a note, you need to have either Photoshop CS6 or Photoshop CC to find these.
Where to Find Photoshop’s Hidden Photographic Toning Presets
Step 1
So here’s how to find the presets. They’re all hidden in the Gradient Map adjustment. Go to your Adjustments panel (Window > Adjustments). Select the Gradient Map adjustment which is this the one on the bottom right.
Step 2
You now have a Gradient Map adjustment layer. Click on the arrow button to expand the gradient preset picker, then click on the cogwheel. Here’s where the hidden photographic toning presets are. Select that and click OK. If you don’t want it to replace your current gradient presets, you can click Append instead.
Step 3
So here’s all the presets and if you click on them you can see how they affect your photo. But it’s hard to tell by the tiny thumbnail what each preset is. So what I usually like to do is to change the view from thumbnail mode to list mode. And you can do this by clicking on the cogwheel and selecting Large List.
Now you can see the name of the gradient and it’s just much easier to use.
Step 4
If you need to edit the gradient, you can just click on the gradient and bring up the gradient editor. Here you can reposition the sliders to fine tune the contrast and you can even change the colors if you want.
Free Reference Chart
So that’s where you can find the hidden photographic toning presets. By the way, I made a reference chart for you and it shows you all the presets in one image. The chart is free and you download it below. I hope you found that useful. If you like my videos, be sure to subscribe for more.
