Graduated filter Lightroom 6/CC

goinggreynow

goinggreynow

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Morning all,
After some very good advice on TP, I am part way through my Lightroom trial. I am very much liking what I see so far. Previously, I had always used DPP. If I decide to stay with Lightroom, I am still unsure whether to go the CC subscription route or buy a stand alone version. I can't see me using Photoshop very much - I have an old version of Elements on my PC which is hardly used!
Have sat through a series of training videos, so hope I've got the basics. Still much to learn - do you ever stop learning??
One thing is confusing me though. With the grad filter applied, I want to be able to effectively use a "hard" grad, not a "soft". What I want to do is therefore decrease the distance between the centre and bottom lines of the grad, leaving the distance between top line and centre line unchanged.
Can this be done? Have I explained the issue clearly enough?
many thanks
 
On a Mac you hold down the Option key while dragging one of the grad borders. Then the other border moves in the opposite direction and the centre line stays where it is.

I imagine you'd use Alt on Windows.
 
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Hi Rob,
thanks for taking the time to reply.
As you say, dragging with the "ALT" key in windows allows me to move both top and bottom bars either closer to, or further from, the centre line.
However, what I'm looking for is to be able to move the bottom line closer to the centre whilst the distance from the top line to the centre line remains unchanged. I'm thinking this will have the effect of creating a "hard" not "soft" grad effect.
Would very much welcome any further thoughts or advice.
Thanks.
 
goinggreynow said:
Hi Rob,
thanks for taking the time to reply.
As you say, dragging with the "ALT" key in windows allows me to move both top and bottom bars either closer to, or further from, the centre line.
However, what I'm looking for is to be able to move the bottom line closer to the centre whilst the distance from the top line to the centre line remains unchanged. I'm thinking this will have the effect of creating a "hard" not "soft" grad effect.
Would very much welcome any further thoughts or advice.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Forget the centre line. The top is where your fade begins and the bottom is where it ends. Move them apart for a soft grad and closer together for hard grad. There is no need to press alt to move these lines, just grab either the top or bottom line and move them.

The centre line plays no role in this other than for positioning and rotating.
 
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Exactly. The only difference between a soft and hard grad is how quickly the transition occurs: i. e. how close the start an end are to each other.

In Lightroom, there is no additional control over the rate of change between those points, but I don't think it's ever something I'd worry about.
 
Thanks to both Rob and Elliott. Grateful to you for your comments. Have also now discovered the brush feature within the grad filter tab which enables me to erase/brush out part of the mask. This should do the trick. As previoulsy mentioned, I'm a new LR user, so learning all the time. Thanks again.
 
Brushing a grad mask is a brand new feature in v6. Can be quite handy
 
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