Personally, I love using all the different tools Adobe Photoshop has to offer. Getting familiar with the countless ways and techniques to adjust an image is a big part of becoming a better photographer and editor.

Every photo is unique, and so it often requires different post-processing steps. However, it doesn’t have to be super complicated all the time.

Luckily Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw offer us powerful tools that enable a variety of excellent adjustment possibilities.

In this article, I want to talk about one of my favorite filters inside Lightroom/Camera Raw, and that’s the graduated filter. In this case, I use Adobe Camera Raw, so the screenshots will be from there, but it doesn’t really matter as both programs run the same editing engine anyway.

The good thing about this tool is that you can either apply it in your Raw processing or inside the Camera Raw filter, which can be used multiple times in Adobe Photoshop.

Alright, now, let’s get started with some easy tips to incorporate in your photo editing workflow!

One tip to achieve the best results

First, let’s start with a little tip to help you to get better results using the graduated filter. I recommend applying only the soft end of the filter to get a nicely feathered transition in your image.

When you add the filter without any feathering, you will most likely see a hard edge where the effect suddenly ends, and since we’re aiming for a clean and good looking image, it is crucial to avoid working like that.

The red line of the filter is the one with the feathered edge, so simply drag the green part out of the frame to make sure that only the smooth mask applies to your image.

Since you have the option to stack up multiple graduated filters, it’s even more important to work this way, so you overcome any sloppy overlapping effects.

How to balance out tonal values

We all know the situation in the field when the dynamic range is too high to be captured in one Raw file.

Often we manage to gather all the information in the histogram, but it still looks too contrasty on your screen. In this case, it’s a good idea to use the graduated filter inside Adobe Camera Raw to balance out the tonal values.

It’s a good starting point to create a flat and well-balanced file inside your Raw so you can add more “extreme” adjustments later on inside Adobe Photoshop.

If you want to get the cleanest file possible, it’s crucial to adjust the tonal values locally instead of globally.

When you make too many global adjustments - like raising the shadows and bringing down the highlights - it can quickly happen to you that the transition between foreground and background gets messed up, and white halos start to occur.

I also cover this issue in my article “how to edit your images without overdoing it,” so make sure to check it out!

The screenshots below state exactly how I recommend using the filter for tonal balancing. Use one adjustment to darken down the sky and one to brighten the foreground.

Make sure to use only the feathered part of the masks, as I mentioned before.

The great advantage of the filter is that you have several options to apply to your image.

Instead of simply lifting or decreasing the exposure, you can also raise the shadows and blacks to avoid that some parts of the foreground/background transition get darkened as well.

You can always re-drag the filter if you don’t like the effect anymore, which is a fantastic way to balance out the exposure in your files.

How to make local contrast adjustments

Tonal balancing is, of course, not the only way to use graduated filters. They’re also perfect for adding local contrast and texture to your image.

In my opinion, they have the most impact on your file when there is a clear horizon line like in the sample image. This makes it super easy to drag your filter across the area you want to adjust.

Now you have several options to apply local contrast, and as always - it depends on the photo itself. In our case, we want to further brighten the foreground rocks and the water by adding whites and also some exposure.

After that’s done, we can either use the same filter or apply another one to add some extra contrast and clarity to emphasize the texture of our foreground elements.

The graduated filter makes it so easy to enhance your image in multiple ways! You can apply as many as you want to achieve the best results possible.

It’s also perfect for practicing purposes since you can easily remove it when you don’t like it anymore or if the adjustment “hurt” your image.

How to make local color adjustments

The graduated filter is definitely useful for other processing situations as well. It’s a perfect tool to locally adjust colors of your image - especially when you have a straight horizon line and a clear separation between foreground and background.

In my opinion, it’s not the best to use if you want to target only specific subjects in your frames like a flower or a single rock, for example. In this case, I recommend using the radial filter instead.

Feel free to check out my in-depth article about “how to use the radial filter” to find more information about it.

My sample image, though, is a perfect example of how to add local color adjustments using the graduated filter. Simply drag it over the area you want to edit, but make sure to use only the feathered part of it.

Now you have several options to enhance the color in the sky. I personally like to add some warmth and magenta to make it stand out, and a little saturation increase helps as well.

The most powerful way to add an extra pop to the already reddish sky is by applying additional colors to it.

You can select a color using the function inside the graduated filter, and it will automatically be applied to the selected areas of your image.

I recommend doing this on a completely fresh one as you might want to adjust the position of it to overcome too strong effects in your sky.

After that’s done, we can also start editing the foreground a bit. I personally like to keep my shadows a bit cooler than the highlights to create a nice color contrast.

To achieve this effect, simply drag a graduated filter over the foreground area and add some blue color tones to it. It's as simple as that, guys! Again make sure only to use the feathered part of the filter to overcome any weird artifacts on the dark to bright transition.

Of course, we can also increase the saturation of the water if we desire. So to sum it up, the graduated filter makes a lot of sense when you have clear horizon lines with the obvious foreground to background transition.

You can either apply settings like white balance, tint, and saturation or even apply an extra color to your sky to make it stand out even more.

Feel free to check out the video!

How to combine it with the brush tool

So far, I talked about how graduated filters are best used when there is a clear horizon line in your image, but that’s not always the case, of course.

The good thing is that you don’t have to rely only on them as you can also use radial filters - check out my article about how to use them. But since this post is about graduated filters, I want to mention a quite powerful method to adjust further the selection we made before, and that’s by using the brush tool inside Adobe Lightroom or Camera Raw.

After you applied the graduated effect to your photo, you have the option to remove it in certain parts if you desire. In the case of our sample image, it can happen that we only want to enhance the texture in the water without touching the basalt rocks surrounding it.

Now the brush tool comes into play, my friends! Simply drag the graduated filter above your foreground and add the wanted adjustments by only looking at the water.

Now click on the brush icon, and make sure to have a little “minus” next to it, which indicates that you now can remove the effect in specific parts.

Simply brush over the rocks and the other foreground elements you want to be untouched by your previous edits, so you only have the water left.

You can also redo it by clicking on the “+” icon to repaint the effect. That’s such a fantastic feature inside Camera Raw, which is often overlooked.

You can use the same technique to fix your horizon line if some adjustments from the graduated filter accidentally affected areas that you didn’t want to adjust.

In the end, it’s always a mixture of techniques that ends up in the best results, and that’s one big reason to know them all (or most of them), so you can easily apply them whenever it’s needed!

Alright guys, thanks a lot for reading my article and I hope that you learned something useful.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let me know down in the comments!

Cheers,
Daniel Gastager