Adobe Photoshop CS4 Gradient Tool

The Adobe Photoshop CS4 gradient tool is great for creating professional banners and buttons for your website or blog. It is an easy tool to use and just requires basic Adobe Photoshop knowledge. There are also some tricks that I will teach you that will make it even easier to use.

1. First, open a new document in Adobe Photoshop and create a banner or button using the rectangle or ellipse tool.  You can decide to use a new layer, which is located in the bottom right, or you can draw your object on the background.

2. The next step, you want to select your object layer or object with your magic wand tool, located 4 buttons down on the Tool Bar.

3. Next, scroll down to the twelfth button of the toolbar, which should say either Paint Bucket Tool or Gradient Tool.

4. Now make sure that your Gradient is set on Foreground to Background, the option is on the top-left portion of your window and Under the PS Icon.

5. Next, select the colors you would like your object to blend to and from.  The foreground color or left-most color of the color pane, located towards the bottom of the toolbar, will represent the bottom of your gradient.  The background color or right-most color of the color pane will represent the top of your gradient.

6. Now draw a line in the direction that you want your background color to show up.  So if you want your background color to be at the top of your object draw a line up.  Where you draw the line doesn’t matter but the size of the line does it regulates the amount of the background color that shows.  You can also draw your line at angles to get a diagnal gradient.

If you didn’t use a new layer you might have noticed the entire picture pane was turned into your gradient.  If this happen, simply hit Ctrl+Alt+Z and it will return to the previous view.  Now simply select the object with the magic wand tool and try your gradient again.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Website Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.