How to make a gradient in "Photoshop"

The Gradient tool in Photoshop is placed on the toolbar (on the left) in the "one bundle" with the "Fill" bucket and is turned on with the quick button G. It also floods the drawing with "paint", but not solid color, but with overflows Different colors and shades with given transitions from sharp boundaries to smooth, hardly noticeable "flow" of one color in another or dense coloring in a transparent layer.

Tool Settings Panel

For the bucket in the "Edit" menu, the "Fill" command is provided, where you can set its parameters, specifying what color (or pattern) to fill, how to deal with transparent areas and so on. And the gradient in "Photoshop" paints everything indiscriminately, however, adhering to the framework of the selected area, if it is specified, but no more "conditions" are not put to it.

The effect parameters, as in all other instruments, are set in the settings panel at the top. Clicking the left mouse button on the small triangle next to the thumbnail on the left (or right click on the picture) opens the palette with the predefined set of standard color transitions.

This window has its own menu, which is expanded by clicking on the gear (or a small arrow next to it) in the upper right corner. Here you can select several more "regular" sets, sort them by the "Replace Gradients" command, and set the size of the thumbnails, and by default the gradient in "Photoshop" performs a smooth linear transition from the first color to the second one.

In standard sets, there are options for transitions to transparency, but in order for them to work, you need to tick the "Transparency" checkbox, otherwise the drawing will be flooded with one selected color.

In addition to the color gradient options, you can select its shape (linear, radial, cone, mirror and diamond) in the settings panel.

With the choice of the blending mode and opacity, everything is clear, a tick in the "Inverted" box will build the reverse effect. With transparency, we figured out, and the function "Dithering", intentionally "zashumlivaya" drawing, makes the color transition more natural.

Unlike the "bucket" fill, in order to draw a gradient, you need to turn on the tool and select the color transition type, draw a line in the drawing, indicating the start and end points of the effect. After that, the program will fill the document with colors with selected overflows and in the specified direction.

If you draw a line with the Shift key pressed, the transition can be made strictly vertically, horizontally or at an angle of 45 degrees.

Editor in Chief of Gradient Fills

The collection of ready-made effects is represented by ten groups of options, each of which offers from 4 to 16 color solutions, so the choice is quite decent. But those who are not enough, can not worry, because we can create a gradient in "Photoshop" ourselves.

We opened a window with sets of pre-installed color transitions by clicking on the small arrow next to the effect's thumbnail. And if you click on the thumbnail, "Editor ..." opens, where, using the appropriate settings, we will be able to create our own variations of color overflows without any restrictions.

"Photoshop" offers two modes of gradient fill: "Continuous" and "Noise". By default, the "Continuous" mode is set, because in most cases, asking how to make a gradient in "Photoshop", users mean the usual kind of effect with smooth and gradual color transitions.

Construct a continuous color transition

The colors are controlled by the sliders (they are control points, they are also markers) at the bottom of the gradient scale, and the upper sliders are responsible for the opacity. The control point is added by clicking on the corresponding border of the effect selection panel.

Clicking on the color / opacity checkpoint activates the paint / opacity selection boxes, the positions on the scale (%), and the "Delete" button. At the same time, on both sides of the new marker, the editor places midpoints (diamonds) of color / opacity, "tacitly" occupying the middle position between adjacent control points-markers, but they can also be moved. In the middle points of the color, the gradient in Photoshop displays equal mixtures of the initial and final colors, but the average opacity points in the comments hardly need.

Colors are selected by double clicking on the checkpoint or following the color sample in the "Checkpoints" section. If the cursor is inside the gradient selection bar, it turns into an eyedropper, which you can select a color on the scale or directly on the image.

The "Smoothness" engine adjusts the smoothness of the transition between multi-colored and multi-colored stripes.

"Noisy" color transition

Gradient "Noise", in contrast to the effect in continuous mode, represents a random distribution of colors in the specified range of colors. Depending on the smoothness (unevenness), it can look like a "normal" effect with smooth transitions (smoothness / roughness up to 30-40%) or as a variegated, thin band spectrum (smoothness / roughness up to 90-100%).

In addition to the smoothness setting, when creating a transition, you can:

• Choose a color model (RGB, HSB, LAB);
• Limit colors (for excessively saturated colors);
• Enable transparency (for random colors);
• Select "Another option" (creates an effect with arbitrary color transitions, but in accordance with the preset settings).

Save the created color transition

If you plan to apply the gradient further, in "Photoshop" on this account everything is thought out.

For a new effect to fall into one of the predefined (or custom) sets of standard variants, you need to think up the name and enter it into the Name field before you approve the editor (Ok), and then click the New button.

You can "Save" the gradient on your disk as a file with the GRD (Adobe Photoshop Gradient) extension, which by default will please the Gradients folder in the Presets directory of your version of Adobe Photoshop. From there, new effects are extracted and loaded into the editor.

Gradient fill as style

The gradient in Photoshop can be created on the drawing (or a blank canvas) from the layers panel by clicking on the corresponding button at its bottom and selecting the "Gradient Overlay" style.

In essence and settings, this function does not differ from the color transition tool. True, here in the "Gradient Overlay" dialog box, you do not need to draw a line manually, and the angle is set either by a radial arrow slider or by entering a numerical value.

"Painless" gradient on the service layer

At the very beginning it was necessary to make a reservation that this effect should be created on a separate new layer, so as not to spoil the drawing itself. But for this, in addition to the usual layers, Photoshop provides service, or corrective, layers, the list of which opens with a round black and white button at the bottom of the layers panel.

Among them is the "Gradient" layer, the dialog box of which is similar to the effect window in layer styles, where you can select a ready-made or build your color transition, specify a style, select an angle, scale, make an inversion, apply dithering and align on a layer.

How to use the gradient in "Photoshop"

On the irresistibility of this coloring, you can write poetry, and if you say simply and briefly, it's beautiful. Therefore, it is so popular in the design art and as a background pattern, but this effect can also be used to apply a tonal transition to the picture, to use it as an alpha channel when creating a depth map, in combination with a layer mask, etc.