How to Reproduce Effects in Photoshop (Part 1)

A lot of times, you’ll find photos that have been processed with a color grading you really like. And if you want to replicate the looks, it’s very hard to do. There are a lot of tutorials that teach you how to create a very specific effect. But there’s very little information on how to actually decode and replicate the color gradings by yourself.

In this 2 part series, you’ll learn brand new techniques that you can use to replicate color gradings. Typically, these sort of advanced topics could be sold as an expensive and fluffed up 4 hour postprocessing course. But time is valuable and I’m always trying to find ways to teach you post processing techniques that are easier and more efficient. So I came up with some new techniques that will make replicating looks so much easier and faster with less guesswork involved.

These techniques will work with a majority of the color grading effects out there. It’s also the very first time I’m teaching it to anyone. So if you want to learn these secret tricks, keep reading and you’ll learn how it’s done.

Tutorial Resources

Here’s the photo that I used for this tutorial. You can follow along with the same image or using your own.

Tones & Color

This is a two part tutorial. In part one, you’ll learn how to replicate the tones from someone elses photo. In part two, you’ll learn how to replicate colors. Some color gradings are made with only tonal adjustments, some are made with only color adjustments, and some are made with varying levels both.

First of all, if you haven’t used the curves adjustment before, then watch my video on how to use the tone curves with the tone chart technique. It’s the easiest way to understand and get the feeling of how the curves adjustment works.

So what are the differences between tonal and color adjustments? Originally I was going to give you a very detailed explanation and show you some color science but that would make the tutorial too long. So here’s the quick gist:

Tonal adjustments are basically anything that you do with the Curves adjustment. So if you’re brightening your image, that is a tonal adjustment because it is possible to do it with the tone curves. Tints like these, eventhough they produce color effects, they’re still tonal adjustments because you can do it with the tone curves.

Color adjustments are anything you can do with the Hue/Saturation adjustment in Photoshop or the HSL adjustments in Lightroom. So desaturating your image is a color adjustment because you can do it with those HSL adjustments.

Okay so that was the basics. Now that you know the difference between tonal and color adjustments, let’s start replicating tones.

Replicating Tones – Creating the “Before” photo

Tones are the first thing that you should replicate. In this part one video, you’ll learn a cool trick on how to reverse engineer tones.

Step 1

I have here a picture that I downloaded from unsplash.com. You can use the same image or your own. If you’re using your own, start off with one that has a strong color grading effect, preferably one with a color tint, because it’s much easier to replicate the look of a strong effect than a subtle effect.

Step 2

To start, we need the before and after photos. But most of the time, you can’t get the before photo. So what you do instead is turn the after photo into the before photo. Now there’s some limitations to this. For example, if the photo has clipped highlights or shadows, you can’t recover those details and you have to guess some of it.

Step 3

First load the image into Photoshop and duplicate the layer. In your Adjustments panel, add a Curves adjustment layer. This is the only layer you need to manipulate the tones. Don’t worry about the color shifts, saturation, etc. – we’re just focusing on the tones.

Step 4

In the Properties panel, select the Black Point Sampler. With this tool, we can specify the black point of the photo.

Hold the Alt or Option key and click on the darkest area in the photo. Keep holding the Alt or Option key and clicking on the darkest areas until there’s nothing darker.

Step 5

Now we’re going to specify the white point of the photo. So select this White Point Sampler tool, hold the Alt or Option Key, and click on the brightest areas until there’s nothing brighter.

Step 6

So we have the Black and White points set. The next one to set is the gray point. Before we start, if you don’t want your color grading to affect the white balance, then don’t set a gray point. A lot of times, you don’t need to do this. But let’s say that I want the effect to actually tint my images blue. In that case, I’ll use the gray tool and click on something that’s neutral color which will reduce the blues in the before photo.

Step 7

The last thing to do is to adjust the brightness and contrast. Just like with the gray point, if you don’t want the color grading to change the brightness or contrast, then you can skip this part. But if you want it to do that, then you can either do this with the current curves adjustment layer or add a new Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer.

I’m just going to use the existing curves adjustment and create an inverted S shape like this. This will reduce the contrast and make it closer to what the before picture looks like.

We’re done and we now have a before photo that we can use as a reference. The colors could use some improvement but don’t worry about that yet because that is for part 2 of this series. In this part 1 video, we’re only focusing on the tones.

Replicating Tones – Creating the Tone Curve

Here’s the awesome part. And this is where you should pay attention. I’m not going to explain exactly how everything works… just follow along and you’ll see what’s happening.