Changing the Color Grading of an image is a great way to change its mood of it, and in Photoshop there are a ton of ways to do that. You can make it from scratch, using Gradient Maps, matching colors, using third-party plugins, and many more. Today, I’ll show you how you can do it quickly AND have more control over the color grading by using your source and target images and a simple Curves layer.
But before we start, and if you want to follow this tutorial as described, please download the following free images from Pixabay and Pexels which will be used as our Source and Target images:
Step 1: Open the Target picture in Photoshop.
Step 2: Go to File > Place, locate the Source image in your computer, and click on Place.
Step 3: Select the Background layer in the Layers Panel. Click on the “Create New Adjustment Layer” icon and from the dropdown menu select “Curves”.
Step 4: In the Curves Properties panel, double-click on the Black Point icon (the Color Picker window will show up).
Step 5: Click over the darkest point of the source image and click OK in the Color Picker window.
