Quick Photography Tips

Have you ever wondered what it would look like if you took a black and white photograph but replaced all the different shades of grey with different shades of a colour instead? Well that’s what we’re going to do in this tip…

(I know “coloured monochrome” is a strange phrase but if you can think of a better name for this effect, let me know in the comments.)

Here’s our starting image - a photo of a sculpture called Felix by Maurizio Cattelan displayed as part of the TH:2058 installation at the Tate Modern in London…

To convert this into a coloured monochrome picture we are going to use Photoshop’s “Gradient Map” tool. As is often the case in Photoshop, there are a number of ways to achieve this effect but I think this one gives the most control over the process and is completely non-destructive.

Create a new gradient map adjustment  (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map) and in the Gradient Map window that appears, click on the gradient itself (not the drop-down arrow). This opens another dialogue window…

This dialogue window allows you to map the tones of the picture to a gradient of colours. Unless you want a pretty wacky looking final image, you’ll want to creat a custom gradient rather than using one of the default presets. In this case we create a custom gradient that goes from black to white through our chosen colour half way between them (note Location:50%). If you select the middle colour selector you get two little diamond pointers which you can move left or right along your gradient to control the transitions between colours. In this case I’ve left them both at half-way as well.

Here’s what our image looks like now:

You may decide you’re done at this point. I decided the effect was a bit too extreme so I reduced the opacity of the gradient overlay layer to 60% which brings back some of the colours from the original image giving this final result:

I find this effect works particularly well with blues but don’t let that stop you trying it out with other colours too…