dazco

In PS7 Is there a way to do a gradient that is not from one color to another, but instead does a gradual darken? In other words, i have a pic that is too light on the bottom but just about right up top. So i'd like to do a top to bottom gradient thats a gradual darkening like what you'd normally do with levels, but with zero affect at the very top of the picture to the maximum darkening i choose at the very bottom.
Thanks...

Chester

Add a "Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer" and fill it's mask with a black and white gradient.
Use the brightness value that you prefer.

Rantin Al

Hiya Dazco, try the following.

Create an Adjustment Layer, contrast, curves, levels or whatever is appropriate for the repair.

Concentrate on the damaged area and adjust to correct that part.
Ignore the 'good' part of the area going off the scale
Click on the mask for the Adjustment Layer.
Create a gradient on the mask going from bottom to top and with the colours going from white to black.
This will hide the over adjusted 'good' part of the image, but allow the repaired area to blend into the image.

You may need to adjust the blend on the mask to get an acceptable blend, but give it a try.

I've used this technique often. Sometimes using it on a duplicate layer instead of just an adjustment layer.
This allows better control over the mask, opacity and blending.

Give it a try and post up your results.
(Post up samples of any future problems, it's easier to explain a real solution if we can see what the actual question refers to.)

Al.

dazco

Thanks all. I guess this is a bit over my head, as i don't know how to use masks. I guess i'll just keep trying.

Chester

Trust me Dazco, you won't regret learning more about masks; they simply rock!

Good luck and enjoy the experience.

AppleCider

Dazco, Chester is right. You need to learn about masks, particularly layer masks (and in your case, the masks that go with an adjustment layer).

To get an idea how they work, see Mark's tutorial on Layer Masks. It will give you a good idea how a mask works, and all masks work the same way.

dazco

Ok, i read that tutorial and did something similar. I created a new layer and selected the bottom 1/3 of it which is the area i wanted to darken gradually. Then i filled it with black and added a lot of gaussian blur. Then i dropped the opacity of the layer down till it darkened the area. Worked pretty well tho i would rather have been able to do the same but with levels instead of a color. I'm sure it's possible, but i'm not sure how. Thanks.

wbiss

dazco, you can add a layer mask to a curves adjustment layer. This example is an "extreme" to give you an idea...

Erik

Perhaps it was this you were trying?

1/ Open your photograph in PS
2/ Grab its icon in the layers palette and drag to the second icon from the right (create new layer) at the bottom of the LP (layers palette)
3/ Open the Levels, or Curves (which is even better, but may be a bit baffling at first) Tool and drag until your top is of an acceptable lightness. In Levels I would use the middle (gamma) slider, in curves, I would drag the curve in the right half of the dialog.
4/ Now you have two pics: a bottom one that is OK in the bottom part but too light in the upper part, and a second one (click the eyes to see the difference) that is OK in the uppoer part, but way too dark in the bottom part. Here is where masks come in. They allow you to hide the bottom part in the top layer, and instead show the correct bottom part of the bottom layer. This is how you make one:

1/ You click on the second icon from the left at the bottom of the layer's palette, the circle in the rectangle. You now see in the palette that a mask has been added. At this moment it is white, meaning that nothing of the bottom layer can be seen. But when it would be completely black, the top klayer image would be completely hidden, masked, and you would only see the bottom layer. With greys, you would get a mixture of the two.
2/Right now your mask is active. You can see that because the mask icon, the circle in the rectangle appears at the right of the eye icon. See it? OK? when you click on the image icon of a layer, the image is active and can be changed. At the right of the eye you see a brush. When you click on the mask's icon, you can change the mask, and the circle in the rectangle icon will be visible.
3/ So see that your mask is active.
4/ Set your foreground and background colours to default: fore is black, and backgr is white.
5/ Take the gradient tool, choose linear gradient and drag from the bottom to the top. This way you will let the bottom part of the bottom layer shine through, and the top part of the top layer will be visible because the mask does not influence the top part.
6/ Yet, this isn't perfectly what you wanted: the gradient should be more concentrated on the bottom half, and influence less the middle region. This you can achieve by using Levels on the mask. See that it is active,then open the Levels dialog. Drag the left slider to the right to some 86 to start with, then the right one to some 172. Adapt these values of you want to.

As an experiment: Take a brush, set the foreground colour to black and paint on the mask (when it's active), now do the same with white. See what it does, and how it influences the image. This is even more stunning if you use Ctrl/Cmd+I to invert the image to the top layer.
Also try some grey (between black and white) to paint with...

enjoy!

dazco

Thanks for that, and for everyone's input. I've copied all posts and will save them for reference. Thank you all.