Just remember to wait until after you've released your mouse button before releasing the Shift key or it won't work: If you want to make it easier to draw a perfectly horizontal gradient, press and hold your Shift key as you're dragging, which will limit the angle in which you can drag. Notice that so far, all we can see is a thin line between the starting point and the end point. When you release your mouse button, Photoshop completes the gradient and draws it with your chosen colors.įor example, I'll click on the left side of my document, then with my mouse button still held down, I'll drag over to the right side. As you're dragging, you'll see only a thin line indicating the direction of the gradient. Simply click in your document to set a starting point for the gradient, then keep your mouse button held down and drag away from the starting point to where you want the gradient to end.
#Photoshop for home use mac how to
Let's use it to help us learn how to actually draw a gradient, and along the way, we'll see how easy it is to change its colors to whatever we need!ĭownload this tutorial as a print-ready PDF! Drawing A Gradient With The Gradient Toolĭrawing a gradient with the Gradient Tool in Photoshop is as easy as clicking and dragging your mouse. Since it's based on your current Foreground and Background colors, the Foreground to Background gradient is the easiest of all the gradients to customize and the one that often proves most useful. The current Foreground (upper left) and Background (lower right) colors.
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): 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. We'll learn all about the Gradient Editor in the next tutorial. For this tutorial, we'll focus on the Gradient Picker itself. 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. One is by opening Photoshop's Gradient Picker the other is by opening the larger Gradient Editor.
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. Selecting the Gradient Tool from the Tools panel. To do that, I'll go up to the File menu in the Menu Bar along the top of the screen and choose New: Let's start by creating a new Photoshop document. Let's get started!ĭownload this tutorial as a print-ready PDF! Drawing Gradients In Photoshop Creating A New Document I'll be using Photoshop CC here but this tutorial is also fully compatible with Photoshop CS6. 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. 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! 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!Īlong 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. 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 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.
We can fill text and shapes with gradients. 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. In this tutorial, we'll learn how to draw gradients in Photoshop! There are many places within Photoshop where gradients are used.
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