Gradient Map plugin provides an alternative way to edit Lightroom RGB Tone Curve. Instead of adjusting cubic spline, you choose colors for adjustable positions on the curve.

Gradient Map is powerful color grading tool, it has been one of the reasons why I have been using PhotoShop, since there has not been anything like this available in Lightroom. But, since re-iterating over and over between Lightroom and Photoshop isn’t really efficient, I decided to create this plugin. It operates with Lightroom’s built-in develop settings, so there is no megabyte-TIFF export required, and you can continue adjustments with Lightroom controls.

Pro-tip: On the Mac OS X, you have variety of color pickers, e.g you can copy-paste images on the “Image Palette” picker, so if you are inspired by a movie poster, you can use it as a color reference.

Download

Get Gradient Map 0.2.1178

Installation

Unzip the package under your home folder, go to Lightroom Plug-in Manager, click Add and select Gradient Map.lrplugin.

Running

You can start the plugin from File ‣ Plug-in Extras ‣ Gradient Map

When you open the plugin, the plugin computes current colors set in your RGB curve. If you have points set in different positions in individual curves, you might notice that every point is converted to R/G/B entry.

On the screen you will see a list of the colors. This is the main user interface:

  • The boxed color is color picker, you can change color by clicking this box and adjust the color value. Changes will be immediately reflected in the current photo.
  • Slider changes the position of the color, actual value is shown on the right side.
  • Clicking checkbox on the left removes this color.
  • Add Stop button creates a new color entry. Currently, it generates an interpolated value in the largest gap.
  • Sort button simply re-orders the buttons, in case you modify the positions
  • Ok will close the dialog and accept current settings
  • Cancel will restore the settings before plugin

Notes

Since version 0.2.1034 uses Lightroom 6’s new API for setting the gradient, and falls back to previous API on Lightroom 4 and 5.

Known issues

  • Every change generates a LR history step. I can’t do anything about it, this is limited by Lightroom API
  • There is a maximum on 10 distinct colors shown, because Lightroom’s plugin UI is really limited with dynamic content
  • You can delete last two color values, which shouldn’t be possible, and you need to reopen the plugin to continue.

5 Comments

  1. I have loaded the plug-in, and all I get is luminosity 0 to 255, not color. I will say that by hitting sort 7 times one can then get luminosity “zones” that are minutely adjustable–very cool–actually a feature I would like to keep. But…

    But why no color–and yes photo is color?

    1. There was a WIndows specific problem with colorpicker, colors exceeding the sRGB colorspace corrupted the colorpicker interface. It has been fixed in 0.2.1034 release.

  2. Hi;
    Love the idea of this but can’t seem to make it work.
    Version 0.3.1178 running LR-CC under Windows 10.
    All I get are the previously mentioned luminosity Black at 0, and white at 255. Yes I can click on the squares and change the colours but no matter what I do I don’t actually get a change in the photo though I do get many camera raw and exposure history steps there is no actual change to the photo between the before and after.
    Regards
    Sher

  3. I have the same issue as james in Lighroom CC 2015. When I run Gradient Map on a color photo I just get 2 black and white luma swatches. No colors 🙁

  4. Hi i’m trying to apply this plugin, but nothing happens. Can you explain how it works. Already installed over Plugins Manager. I’m using the lattest version of Lr on MacOSx

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