How to make a dark and moody color tone in Adobe Photoshop

How to make a dark & moody color tone in Adobe Photoshop

Some images would be better if they had a dark and moody feel to it. Many people turn to photoshop to manipulate their photos, but don't know how. In this tutorial I will show you exactly how you can give an image a moody look.

End result:

Step 1:

First off, you need to open a Adobe PhotoShop document with the image you want to edit. I will use this royalty free image of a tiger, but you can use whatever you want.

Step 2:

First start off by making a copy of the main layer, then hide the main one. You should always do this no matter what editing you are doing. This is to preserve the original, so if you make a huge mistake, you can always go back to the original.

Step 3:

Now you want to create a new adjustment layer (the half-filled circle at bottom right). Choose the "Channel Mixer".

Step 4:

Change the "Output Channel" to "Blue". Then move the "Blue" slider down to 0%, and "Green" up to +100%.

Step 5:

We create another new adjustment layer, but this time we choose "Selective Color".

Step 6:

Change the "Colors" tab to "Reds", and change the Cyan slider to +50%, and the Yellow slider to +100%.

Step 7:

Now change the "Colors" tab to "Neutrals", and change the Cyan slider to -20%, and Yellow slider to +10%.

Step 8:

We create another adjustment layer. Choose the "Hue/Saturation" one.

Step 9:

Select "Cyans" from the dropdown, and change the "Saturation" slider to -60.

Step 10:

Select the "Hue/Saturation" layer. Change the blending mode to "Soft Light", and down the opacity to 50%.

Step 11:

Now select the mask at the "Hue/Saturation" layer. When the mask is selected, click the "Image" tab in top left, and select "Apply Image".

Step 12:

Make sure the settings are like this.

Step 13:

Create a new Gradient adjustment layer.

Step 14:

On the "Gradient" dropdown, find and choose the white to black transparent gradient. Change the style to be "Radial", and set the scale to 250%. Also make sure you check off the reverse box.

Step 15:

Select the mask layer at the "Gradient Fill" layer, and again, click on the "Image" tab, and choose "Apply Image".

Step 16:

In the new window, put in these settings.

And voilà, just like that, were done!

Here are the before and after photos:

If you don't like the outcome, you can always change some settings to make it look exactly the way you want. This is just one of many ways you can do it!

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Feel free to leave a comment about what you like/dislike about it!