Where is gradient tool in photoshop

This option is great for applying to layer masks or fading circular sections of your layers. An angle gradient will take up your entire layer and transition from one color to another in a counter-clockwise rotation.

Wherever you start your gradient will be the hard edge between the first and last color of your gradient. This gradient type is far more specialized compared to some of the other gradient types in Photoshop. The reflected gradient essentially creates a gradient line. The further you drag when creating your gradient, the wider this gradient effect will become. This type of gradient is great for placing against horizontal or vertical edges in your images.

Lastly, the diamond gradient creates a star-shaped gradient that fades in a unique way. This is a useful option when you want to create circular gradients but want more variance of intensity between colors.

These additional settings will be found within the gradient tool settings bar and only take a few seconds to work through. The first option you have is the blend mode of your gradient. These blend modes operate the same as layer blend modes but will only be applied to your new gradients. Next, your opacity option will alter the visibility of your gradient adjustments. After all, you can always adjust the layer opacity later when you apply your gradient onto a new layer.

In that sense, the opacity option becomes slightly redundant. By checking off the reverse option , your gradient will switch sides and reverse itself. This is useful if you want certain colors of your gradient to be applied from another side. However useful, this option only needs to be used in certain instances. The dither option helps to ensure there is a smooth transition between different tones in your gradient.

Without the dither option checked off, you can end up with banding in your gradient. To ensure you have a high quality and seamless gradient, make sure the dither option is checked off. Finally, the transparent option allows you to create transparency when you have a transparent value in your gradient. When you create a gradient, you can apply it directly onto a layer, or you can create a gradient fill layer. Both options will get the job done but have certain pros and cons.

The first option is to apply your gradient directly onto a new layer. This option feels the most natural and makes it easy to draw out your gradient exactly where you need it. After going through your gradient tool settings, create a new layer for your gradient layer. With your new layer selected, click and drag to apply your gradient onto the layer.

Depending on how far you drag between the two gradient points, you can create a hard or soft edge look to your gradient. Easy peasy. With a gradient fill layer, you have slightly less control over the size and location of your gradient. However, if you want a general gradient coming from the edge of your frame, this option works perfectly. By double-clicking on the gradient box, you can access the gradient editor and fine-tune your gradients look.

From there, you can alter the angle, style, scale, and other settings options that will alter the look of your gradient. If you want to make adjustments to this gradient layer, simply double click on the gradient box to reopen the gradient settings. Noise gradients are based on a random distribution of colors between a specified color range, but note that any settings made in the Solid Gradient Editor will have no bearing on the appearance of the noise gradient. The Roughness amount determines the smoothness of a noise gradient and the Color model settings allow you to edit the range of colors used.

One of the best ways to experiment with this feature is to click on the Randomize button and adjust the settings from there. Noise gradient settings can also be saved the same way as you can with solid gradients. Clicking on the Randomize button will present you with many interesting random gradient options to choose from.

You can narrow the range of colors used in the random equation by adjusting the hue sliders. As you can see here, the Roughness can be increased to make the gradient more spiky. The Restrict Colors option prevents the colors from oversaturating and produce a more usable gradient for general CMYK print work. If you check the Add Transparency box, you can introduce random transparency into the equation as well.

The gradient shown here was used to create the radial gradient shown below in Figure 4. As well as choosing the colors, you can also choose the start and end points of your gradient. The Linear gradient will gradually transition your colors in a straight line from the start point to the end point.

The Radial gradient radiates out from the start point in the shape of a circle. The Angle gradient will transition clockwise in the direction of the angle created by the line uniting the start and end points. The Reflected gradient creates a mirror effect using the start point as the center. Finally the Diamond gradient radiates out from the start point in the shape of a diamond. In this tutorial, we'll learn how to draw gradients in Photoshop! There are many places within Photoshop where gradients are used.

The Gradient Tool, for example, lets us draw gradients across layers or selections, or across layer masks to create smooth transitions from one layer to another.

We can fill text and shapes with gradients. We can colorize a photo using a Gradient Map image adjustment, or add color effects with a Gradient Overlay layer style, and more! Gradients are invaluable in Photoshop, and they're a great way to add more interest and life to what would have been a flat-looking image or design.

In this tutorial, we'll cover the basics of how to draw gradients using the simplest and possibly the most useful of Photoshop's gradient-related features, the Gradient Tool. We'll look at other ways of applying gradients in other tutorials, but you'll find that they all work essentially the same way, so once you've learned the basics with the Gradient Tool, you'll be able to take advantage of all the other gradient features that Photoshop has to offer!

Along with learning how to draw gradients, we'll also look at how to select from Photoshop's many preset gradients using the Gradient Picker , including how to load additional gradient sets that are included with Photoshop.

We'll look at different gradient styles that we can draw, and we'll look at a few of the more commonly-used gradients, including what may be the most useful one of all, the default Foreground to Background gradient! Once we've learn the basics of how to draw gradients, in the next tutorial, we'll learn how to edit and save our own custom gradients using Photoshop's Gradient Editor.

Let's get started! Let's start by creating a new Photoshop document. To do that, I'll go up to the File menu in the Menu Bar along the top of the screen and choose New :. This opens the New dialog box. For this tutorial, I'll set the Width of my document to pixels and the Height to pixels.

There's no particular reason why I'm using this size, so if you're working along with me and have a different size in mind, feel free to use it. I'll click OK when I'm done to close out of the dialog box, at which point a new white-filled document appears on the screen:. Photoshop's Gradient Tool is found in the Tools panel along the left of the screen. I'll select it by clicking on its icon.

You can also select the Gradient Tool simply by pressing the letter G on your keyboard:. With the Gradient Tool selected, the next thing we need to do is choose a gradient, and there's a couple of ways we can do that. The difference between the two is that the Gradient Picker simply allows us to choose from ready-made preset gradients, while the Gradient Editor, as its name implies, is where we can edit and customize our own gradients.

For this tutorial, we'll focus on the Gradient Picker itself. We'll learn all about the Gradient Editor in the next tutorial.

When you just want to choose one of Photoshop's preset gradients, or one that you've previously created on your own and saved as a custom preset again, we'll learn how to do that in the next tutorial , click on the small arrow to the right of the gradient preview bar in the Options Bar.

Make sure you click on the arrow itself, not on the preview bar clicking the preview bar will open the Gradient Editor and we don't want to go there just yet :. Clicking the arrow opens the Gradient Picker, with thumbnails of all the preset gradients we can choose from.

You can also double-click on the thumbnail, which will both select the gradient and close out of the Gradient Picker:. By default, only a small number of preset gradients are available, but Photoshop includes other gradient sets that we can choose from.

All we need to do is load them in. To do that, click on the gear icon in the upper right:. If you look in the bottom half of the menu that appears, you'll find the list of additional gradient sets, each based on a specific theme, like color harmonies, metals, pastels, and more.

If you're a photographer, the Neutral Density and Photographic Toning gradients are particularly useful:. To load any of the sets, click on its name in the list. I clicked on the Photographic Toning set. Photoshop will ask if you want to replace the current gradients with the new ones.

If you click Append , rather than replacing the original gradients, it will simply add the new ones below the originals. As we'll see in a moment, it's easy to restore the originals, so I'll click OK to replace them with the Photographic Toning set:. And now, we see in the Gradient Picker that the original gradients have been replaced with the Photographic Toning gradients.

To learn more about the Photographic Toning set and how to use it, check out our complete Photographic Toning Presets tutorial:. To keep us focused on the basics, we'll stick with the original default gradients for now.

To restore them, click once again on the gear icon in the Gradient Picker:. Photoshop will ask if you want to replace the current gradients with the defaults. Click OK :.