Select the area you wish to apply the gradient to. From the Toolbox , select the Gradient Tool. The Gradient Tool Options toolbar appears near the top of your screen. On the Gradient Tool Options toolbar, from the Gradient Options pull-down list, select a gradient fill option.
Creates a gradient which spans from one side to the other side of the layer or selection. Follows the direction of the mouse path. Creates a circular gradient based on the center point and radius that you specify by dragging the mouse. The outermost color in the gradient expands across the entire layer or selection.
Creates a gradient reflected from the center; design is reflected either vertically or horizontally. Optional Adjust the Opacity slider bar until you reach the desired opacity setting.
Optional To reduce the appearance of stripes in the gradient, select Dither. Again, it's not a huge issue in this case, but getting into the habit of keeping everything on its own layer will make working with Photoshop so much easier:.
So far, we've looked mainly at Photoshop's default Foreground to Background gradient, but another one that's often very useful is the Foreground to Transparent gradient, and it's worth looking at because it behaves a bit differently than the others. I'll select it from the Gradient Picker by double-clicking on its thumbnail.
You'll find it directly beside the Foreground to Background thumbnail:. The Foreground to Transparent gradient is similar to the Foreground to Background gradient in that it gets its color from your current Foreground color , which means you can easily change it by choosing a different Foreground color. What makes it special, though, is that there is no second color.
Instead, it transitions from a single color into transparency. I'll undo my current gradient by going up to the Edit menu and choosing Undo Gradient. Then, I'll choose a color by clicking on the Foreground color swatch in the Tools panel. At the moment, it's set to black:. With my Foreground color now set to purple, we see in the gradient preview bar in the Options Bar that I'll be drawing a purple to transparent gradient the checkerboard pattern you can see behind the purple is how Photoshop represents transparency :.
When I release my mouse button, it looks like what I've drawn is a basic purple to white gradient. However, the white we're seeing is actually from the Background layer below the gradient.
It's not part of the gradient itself:. To prove it, I'll temporarily turn off my Background layer by clicking on its visibility icon the eyeball icon in the Layers panel:.
This hides the white background in the document, revealing just the gradient itself, and now we can clearly see that it's really a purple to transparent gradient. Again, the checkerboard pattern is how Photoshop represents transparency:. Another reason why the Foreground to Transparent gradient is different from the others is that Photoshop does not overwrite the previous Foreground to Transparent gradient if we draw another one over top of it.
Instead, it simply adds the new gradient to the original. I'll draw a second Foreground to Transparent gradient, this time from near the bottom of the document up to the center:. I'll release my mouse button, and rather than overwriting my original gradient, Photoshop adds my second one to it.
If I drew a third or fourth gradient maybe one from the left and the other from the right it would add those ones as well:. I'll turn my Background layer back on in the document by clicking once again on its visibility icon :. And now we're back to seeing what looks like a purple to white to purple gradient, even though we know that the white is really just the Background layer showing through the transparency:.
The Foreground to Transparent gradient in Photoshop is great for things like darkening the edges of a photo, or darkening the sky in an image to bring out more detail which we'll see how to do in another tutorial. But for the transparency part to work, you need to make sure the Transparency option in the Options Bar is selected:. If the Transparency option is turned off when drawing a Foreground to Transparent gradient, all you'll end up doing is filling the layer or selection with your chosen Foreground color:.
We won't go through every gradient that we can choose from in Photoshop since you can easily do that on your own , but if you need to draw a black to white gradient and your Foreground and Background colors are currently set to something other than black and white, just grab the Black, White gradient from the Gradient Picker third thumbnail from the left, top row.
Unlike the Foreground to Background gradient, the Black, White gradient will always draw a black to white gradient regardless of your current Foreground and Background colors:. So far, we've seen examples of gradients that transition in a straight line from the starting point to the end point. This type of gradient is known as a linear gradient, but it's actually just one of five different gradient styles we can choose from in Photoshop.
If you look to the right of the gradient preview bar in the Options Bar, you'll see the five Gradient Style icons. Let's see what each of these gradient styles can do. Then, I'll switch back to the Foreground to Background gradient by selecting it in the Gradient Picker:.
I'll press the letter D on my keyboard to reset my Foreground and Background colors back to black and white. Then, just to keep things interesting, I'll change my Background color from white to a light blue:. The default gradient style in Photoshop is Linear , but you can select it manually if you need to by clicking the first icon on the left:. We've already seen several examples of the linear style, which draws the gradient from the starting point to the end point in a straight line based on the direction in which you dragged.
Selecting Reverse in the Options Bar will swap the order of the colors:. The Radial style second icon from the left will draw a circular gradient outward from your starting point:.
To draw a radial gradient, I'll click in the center of my document to set the starting point, then I'll drag outward towards the edge:. I'll release my mouse button, and here we see what the radial gradient looks like. It begins with my Foreground color black at my starting point in the center and moves outward in all directions as it transitions into my Background color blue :. If I had selected the Reverse option in the Options Bar, the colors would be reversed, starting with blue in the center and transitioning outward in a circular fashion into black:.
The Angle style middle icon is where things start to get interesting although maybe not quite as useful :. Much like the Radial style, the Angle style also uses your starting point as the center of the gradient.
But rather than transitioning outward in all directions, it wraps itself around the starting point in a counterclockwise fashion. Then, I'll draw the angle-style gradient the same way as the radial gradient by clicking in the center of the document to set the starting point, then dragging away from it:. Here's what the angle style looks like when I release my mouse button. As with all of Photoshop's gradient styles, selecting Reverse in the Options Bar would give you the same result but with the colors swapped:.
The Reflected style fourth icon from the left is very similar to the standard linear style, but it goes a step further by taking everything on one side of your starting point and mirroring it on the other side:. When I release my mouse button, Photoshop draws a standard linear gradient in the top half of my document between my starting and end points, but then mirrors it in the bottom half to create the reflection:.
Finally, the Diamond gradient style transitions outward from your starting point, similar to the Radial style, except that it creates a diamond shape:. I'll once again click in the center of my document to set the starting point and then drag away from it:. In this case, I think the diamond shape looks better with the colors reversed, but of course it will depend on the colors you've chosen for the gradient and how it's being used in your design our layout:.
One last option we should look at in the Options Bar is Dither. With Dither selected, Photoshop will mix a bit of noise into your gradients to help smooth out the transitions between colors. This helps to reduce banding visible lines that form between colors when the transitions are not smooth enough. The Dither option is turned on by default and you'll usually want to leave it selected:.
There's a couple of other Gradient Tool options in the Options Bar that we'll save for another tutorial because they go a bit beyond the basics. The Gradient Fill adjustment created a layer mask above the model layer, filling the selected area of the photo with the color gradient. Then she chose the Brush B tool, set it to a soft round edge and painted with black to reveal the top part of the dress. She refined the edge of the selection using a smaller brush and painted with a white brush on the mask to reveal parts of the gradient she accidentally hid.
For a subtle color correction, Lukianova added a solid purple color adjustment layer over the image, clicked OK, and lowered the Opacity for the new adjustment layer.
Apply colorful gradients for your high-contrast photos to create a portfolio that is sure to get noticed. Note: Project files included with this tutorial are for practice purposes only. Step 1: Start with Contrast This technique works best on high-contrast photos, so Lukianova applied the effect to this black-and-white photo. Step 2: Colorize a Selection Next, she added a Gradient adjustment layer.
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