The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers

Tonal and Color Adjustments with the Graduated Filter Tool

Another new (and terrific) addition to the latest version of ACR is the Graduated Filter tool. It lets you nondestructively apply graduated tonal and color corrections to your image using a simple graduated overlay that you drag in any direction, and seven slider controls to modify the selected area.

Figure 5-9. Before-and-after images using the Graduated Filter tool in ACR. The three dashed lines indicate modified areas. I made other corrections to the bottom image.

This new addition is analogous to the expensive graduated filters photographers placed over their lenses to balance a bright sky with a darker landscape. The thinking was that by placing a filter that was dark on one side and gradually got lighter toward the other side, you could compress the dynamic range enough to let your camera capture both a bright sky and a dark foreground with one exposure.

These filters were made popular by outdoor photographers such as Galen Rowell who produced amazing scenics that tamed the entire tonal range, resulting in vibrant skies and foregrounds. The problem with graduated filters was that they were expensive, and you had to buy a separate filter for every type of correction. So you'd end up with a couple of neutral density filters, and a handful of color-correction versions to tote around. You could use these filters on your digital ...