Understanding Gradient Maps _ Learn to Procreate

A gradient map will take only the tonal values from an image, disregarding any hue, and then we get to map new colors at points along that tonal range, replacing tones with new colors. So let's take a look at it. Go to adjustments and find gradient map. Once we're in, we'll have the gradient library at the bottom and we can swipe or tap through the library to select a gradient to apply. But let's create a new gradient with the plus button here. This gives us a default black to white gradient. The bar along the bottom here is the gradient, but this also represents the range of tones that we're mapping colors to, from left to right, dark to light. The little squares here at the ends are the two starting color points. Tap on a color point to change its color. We have our different color selection modes along the bottom and we'll make the color for the dark tones a nice blue. And let's make the color point for those light tones yellow. All right, so now we have the entire range of tones being expressed with blue and yellow and the blending of those two colors replacing every shade of gray in between. To add additional color points, tap anywhere inside the gradient and we can drag color points around to adjust where that color sits within those tones. Just going to jump right in now and add some more color points. I'll try and keep a nice linear progression of dark to light colors. You don't have to, of course. If you need to remove a color point, hold briefly on a point and then hit delete. And as always, you can undo any step with a two-finger tap. While that covers all the things that we can do to edit a gradient, I would like to touch a bit more on color points and that range of tone and their behavior. First off, the distance between two color points is doing a couple of things. It dictates how much of a slice of those tones that we're affecting, but also how sharply the colors that we choose will blend. You could drag two color points right on top of each other and get a very sharp shift in color. Second thing is just how much control we have over tone, because it's tone that we're using as the target. And because we can set any color of any brightness, you could choose dark colors to replace lighter tones, or you could wash out whole portions of tones by setting multiple color points to share the same color. And the last thing would be that the width of the entire gradient represents the entire tonal range. So if color points get moved in from those far ends, then we end up clipping the tones at those ends because there won't be colors there to represent them. Okay, we can give our new gradient a name by tapping on the namespace here. And if we're done making edits, we can hit done to get us back to the gradient library. And some quick housekeeping while we're in the library, we can drag and drop gradients around to rearrange them. Hold briefly to delete or duplicate it, and long hold on the plus button to restore the default gradients. This loads in a fresh duplicate set of the defaults, so it's not going to override anything that's already there. Now before we apply our gradient, we can tap with a finger on the canvas to open or close the adjustments menu. Then we can change the filter amount by sliding with a finger left and right. To apply a selected gradient and leave the tool, tap any of the other tools along the top, just like that. I hope this helps. If you need any more, you can find the Procreate handbook. There's a link for that in the description. Or while you're in Procreate, go to actions and then across to the help tab. There's some really good stuff in there. Have fun with it.