The two-tone gelled split-lighting look is quite popular for portraits and fashion photography. Thanks to photographers like Jake Hicks, there are lots of tutorials out there on how to create this look in-camera. But what if you don’t have the gels? Or didn’t even think about trying to gel it during the time of the shoot but you’d like to try to create that look in post? Well, Jesús Ramirez at the Photoshop Training Channel has just the tutorial for you. In this video, he shows us how to easily create the look in Photoshop using gradient maps, blending modes and masks. And as usual, he throws a lot of other tips and tricks in between.
Even if you’re not looking to create this exact look, it’s a fantastic tutorial for teaching you how the gradient maps work within Photoshop, and how they can be applied to your image (or parts of it) in order to achieve certain colour effects.
Jesús also goes into some detail about pen pressure sensitivity when using graphics tablets and the advantages of using layer masks on entire groups of layers. As I said, it’s packed full of tips and tricks and well worth a watch if you’ve never played with gradient maps within Photoshop.