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Module 2 • Lesson 2🎬 Grading with Curves, Gradient Maps & LUTs

Color grading is where a correct photo becomes a photo with a mood. In the intro you met the S-curve; now you will build full cinematic looks with per-channel Curves and gradient maps, then bottle a look as a LUT you can pour over an entire shoot in one click.

📚 What You'll Learn

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Grade with per-channel Curves for precise color in shadows, mids, and highlights
  • Use a Gradient Map to remap tones to a color ramp
  • Apply and save a LUT (Color Lookup) to reuse a grade consistently
  • Keep the whole grade non-destructive and dialable

⏱️ Estimated Time: 60 minutes

🎯 Project: Build a cinematic grade on a scene, then export it as a LUT and prove it drops onto a different photo.

In This Lesson

🎞️ The Goal: A Look, Not Just a Fix

The same pier at sunset, straight out of camera on the right and cinematically graded on the left: deeper teal water and sky, richer contrast, a unified mood. Drag the handle:

After Before
A real grade, applied through the Adobe tools: the exposure is barely touched, but the color relationships are completely re-authored.

🧠 Mental Model: Remapping Color

Correcting an image asks "what is wrong?" Grading asks "what should it feel like?" Technically, every grade is a remap: you decide what color each tone becomes. Shadows do not have to stay neutral; you can send them teal. Highlights can lean gold. That deliberate reassignment is the whole art.

Three tools do the remapping, from most surgical to most sweeping:

  • Per-channel Curves — the precision instrument. Bend the Red, Green, or Blue curve in the shadows or highlights to push exact color into exact tones.
  • Gradient Map — map the whole tonal range onto a chosen color ramp at once. Fast, bold, great for stylized looks.
  • LUT (Color Lookup) — a saved recipe of a finished grade you can re-apply instantly to any image.

🧠 The spiral from the intro

You already S-curved for contrast and split the Blue channel for teal-and-orange. This lesson formalizes that into a repeatable grading craft and, crucially, teaches you to save the look so it is not a one-off you can never reproduce.

flowchart LR A["Correct first<br/>(neutral base, Lesson 2.1 pipeline)"] --> B["Contrast<br/>(S-curve)"] B --> C["Color<br/>(per-channel Curves / Gradient Map)"] C --> D["Refine locally<br/>(masks from Module 1)"] D --> E["Bottle it<br/>(export a LUT)"]
Figure 1: Correct, then grade, then bottle. Grading on top of a neutral base is what makes a look portable to other images.

🌗 Gradient Maps

A Gradient Map takes your image's tones and replaces them with the colors of a gradient: the darkest pixels get the gradient's left color, the brightest get its right color, everything else in between. Choose a teal-to-gold gradient and you have an instant cinematic split-tone.

image tones ↓ mapped to ↓ color ramp teal shadows gold highlights
Figure 2: Tones in, colors out. Lower the Gradient Map layer's opacity (or set it to Color / Soft Light blend mode) so it tints rather than flattens the image.

⚠️ Blend it, don't bake it

At 100% Normal a Gradient Map looks garish and kills detail. Drop the opacity to 15–40%, or switch the layer to Color or Soft Light, so it lends its palette to the real image underneath.

🧴 LUTs: Bottling a Grade

A LUT (Look-Up Table, a .cube or .3dl file) is a saved recipe that says "turn this input color into that output color," for every color. Build a grade you love, export it as a LUT, and you can pour the exact look onto a hundred other photos, or hand it to a teammate. Apply one with a Color Lookup adjustment layer:

Properties — Color Lookup
3DLUT File Teal-Gold Cinematic.cube ▾ Faded Film.cube Bleach Bypass.cube Load 3D LUT… Photoshop ships dozens; File ▸ Export ▸ Color Lookup Tables saves your own.
Figure 3: Drop a Color Lookup layer and choose a LUT, or build your own grade and use File ▸ Export ▸ Color Lookup Tables to save it as a reusable .cube.

🛠️ Guided Build: Grade & Bottle It

Open an image in your Lesson 2.1 pipeline (16-bit, deliberate working space) and correct it to a neutral base first: fix exposure and white balance with a Curves adjustment layer. Keep the photo itself as a plain Background layer (not a Smart Object with Camera Raw Filter): the LUT export in Step 4 expects a Background layer plus adjustment layers. A portrait is ideal, because Lesson 2.3 split-tones this same file. Save as grade-working.psd, then grade in this order.

Step 1: Contrast, then color · 10 min

  1. Add a Curves layer and set your contrast with a gentle RGB S-curve.
  2. New Curves layer. Switch to the Blue channel: lift the shadow end (blue shadows), drop the highlight end (warm, yellow highlights). Blue alone gives blue/yellow; for a truer teal, also lift Green slightly or drop Red slightly in the shadows. This is the classic teal-and-gold in Curves.

Step 2: A Gradient Map accent · 8 min

  1. Add a Gradient Map with a teal-to-gold ramp.
  2. Set the layer to Color or Soft Light and drop opacity to ~20–30% so it unifies the palette without flattening.

Step 3: Refine locally · 6 min

  1. Grades rarely suit every part of a frame. Mask a Curves or the Gradient Map layer (Module 1 skills) so, say, skin stays natural while the background goes moody.
  2. A luminosity mask (Lesson 1.1) is perfect for keeping the grade out of the brightest highlights.

Step 4: Bottle it as a LUT · 6 min

  1. Save your graded master (grade-working.psd) first; Lesson 2.3 reopens it.
  2. The export bakes every visible adjustment layer, not just the selected ones, and a LUT cannot store a mask. So temporarily disable the Step 3 masks (Shift-click each mask thumbnail) and hide anything that is not part of the grade. Adobe's documentation describes the export for a document with a Background layer plus adjustment layers, so keep that structure. Then choose File ▸ Export ▸ Color Lookup Tables, save a .cube, and re-enable the masks afterward.
  3. Open a different photo, add a Color Lookup layer, load your LUT, and watch the whole look transfer. That is your grade, now reusable forever. 🏆

✅ Why bottle it

A LUT is how a look becomes a brand: the same feel across an entire shoot, a client's whole feed, or a team's output. Building the grade is craft; saving it is professionalism.

✅ Project Completion Checklist

  • ☐ Contrast set before color
  • ☐ Color graded with per-channel Curves
  • ☐ A Gradient Map used at reduced opacity / a blend mode
  • ☐ Grade refined with at least one mask
  • ☐ Look exported as a LUT and re-applied to a second image
  • ☐ Graded master saved as grade-working.psd for Lesson 2.3

🧗 Now You: Solo Variation

🌟 Your challenge

  1. Build three distinct LUTs: a warm-summer look, a cold-thriller look, and a faded-matte look. Apply each to the same photo to feel how much mood is pure color.
  2. Reverse-engineer a film still or a favorite photo: name its shadow color and highlight color, then recreate it with per-channel Curves.
  3. Apply one of your LUTs across five different photos and note where it needs per-image tweaking. A LUT is a starting point, not a finisher.

Going further: stack a subtle Gradient Map under a Color Lookup and mask both — layered grading is how the richest looks are built.

🍳 Recipe Card: Cinematic Grade

Build a look and save it

  1. Curves: contrast (RGB S-curve) first
  2. Curves per channel: teal shadows, warm highlights (Blue channel split)
  3. Gradient Map (teal→gold) at ~20–30% / Color blend
  4. Mask locally (luminosity or subject masks)
  5. Save the master; disable masks, then File ▸ Export ▸ Color Lookup Tables → reuse as a .cube

Mantra: correct, then grade, then bottle.

📓 Learning Journal

Add to your journal after this lesson:

  • Key concepts you learned
  • Techniques that clicked for you
  • Questions or confusion points to revisit
  • Ideas you want to try
  • Your progress and feelings about learning this

✍️ This lesson's prompt: Describe the "look" you are drawn to as an editor in terms of shadow color, highlight color, and contrast. Naming your taste is the first step to building it into a LUT.

📝 Lesson Summary

🎓 Key Takeaways

  • Grading is deliberate color remapping: tones become chosen colors.
  • Per-channel Curves are the precision tool; Gradient Maps are the fast, bold one.
  • Blend a Gradient Map (low opacity / Color mode); never bake it at 100%.
  • Save a look as a LUT to reuse it across a shoot or a brand.

🎉 What You've Accomplished

You can now author a look, not just fix an image — and, just as importantly, save it so it is repeatable. That combination of taste plus reusability is exactly what studios and clients pay for.

❓ Common Questions at This Stage

Gradient Map vs a LUT — when do I use which?

A Gradient Map is a live tool you build inside one document. A LUT is a saved, portable file. Often you build a look with Curves + Gradient Maps, then export that look as a LUT to reuse. They are stages of the same craft.

My grade looks great on this photo but wrong on others.

A LUT assumes a similar starting point. Correct each image to a neutral base first (in the Lesson 2.1 pipeline), then apply the LUT. Grading un-corrected images is why a look "breaks" from photo to photo.

🔭 Looking Ahead

Lesson 2.3 — Match, Split-Tone & Soft-Proof finishes the module: making two different photos share one color identity, refining split-tones, and soft-proofing so your grade survives the trip to print.

✅ Before the Next Lesson

  • Build and save two LUTs you would actually use.
  • Grade one image with Curves only, then match it with a Gradient Map, and compare.
  • Write your Learning Journal entry.

📚 Additional Resources

🌟 Encouragement for the Journey

Grading is the most expressive thing you can do to a photo, and you just went from "add contrast" to authoring and bottling a look. That is a colorist's skill. Now go build the palette that feels like you.