Photo Effect: Creating The Gritty, Trendy, High-Contrast, and Desaturated Look

Jesús RamirezJesús RamirezPhotoshop Effects
ByJesús Ramirez

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Your choices stick across every tutorial on this device.

Here’s my shortest tutorial to date. It’s a quick video showing you the highly requested technique that gives photos a trendy, gritty, high-contrast, and desaturated look.

You’ve probably seen a similar grungy effect in movie posters and advertisements.

The effect is quite simple. We’ll only use two adjustment layers and one filter. One of those adjustment layers is the “Color Lookup” adjustment layer found in Photoshop CS6 or newer.

I will also show you an alternative way of creating this effect, in case you are in Photoshop CS5 or older.

I’d love to hear your questions or comments, so leave them below.

Also, feel free to share your results! Please leave them in the comments section or on my Facebook page.

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Before: Photo Effect: Creating The Gritty, Trendy, High-Contrast, and Desaturated Look
Jesús Ramirez

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Jesús Ramirez

Jesús Ramirez is a graphic designer and the founder of the Photoshop Training Channel, which he started in 2012 and has grown past two million YouTube subscribers. He has taught at Adobe MAX, Adobe Summit, and Photoshop World, teaches courses for CreativeLive and Pluralsight, and was one of five artists chosen for Adobe Stock's Make a Masterpiece campaign. His Photoshop templates shipped inside Photoshop CC 2018.

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10 Comments

  4. Very nice, Jesús. Thanks for showing us this trick and especially the tip about how to get around using the LookUp Color filter for those of us with older versions of Photoshop. Good Luck against New Zealand. Looks like y’all will need it! 😉

    2. No problem, Daniel. I’m aware that about half of the people who visit my site have CS5 or older, so when I can, I try to show a work-around.

      Luck?! We’re way past luck, we need a whole lot more than luck at this point! Maybe another coach?! lol

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