Subtitles of the Movie

The Gradient Tool is useful for photographers when trying to create a background, perhaps for a portrait after removing your subject from a distracting background as well as when creating Layer Masks. We'll talk more about the Layer Masks in another movie, but for now I want to show you how the tool works. The Gradient Tool is located in the middle of the Tool Box. There are a lot of different styles of Gradients to choose from. The first is a Linear Gradient which basically goes from one color to the other, either in a horizontal or a vertical fashion. The second style creates a circle and the color radiates out from it. The third one, a very graphic effect that's of less use to photographers. The fourth one is a Reflective Gradient which can be useful, and the last one a Diamond Gradient. For Layer Masks normally you would choose the first style, the Linear Style, and for creating a background for a portrait you might choose the Radial Gradient or the Diamond. This first drop-down menu over here specifies what colors to use with your Gradient. Within it the first option uses the foreground to background colors so that if your Color Picker is set to the default black and white the choice might look the same as the third one. If the Color Picker has other colors selected as it does here, those colors are reflected in the first choice. The second choice uses Foreground to Transparent. The third choice is the black to white. For a Layer Mask normally you're going to want the third choice, while for creating a background you may want the first one. If I return my Color Picker to the default colors and check here you'll see now that the first choice does, indeed, match the third one. To set that to the colors that you might want to use for a background, double-click on the Foreground Swatch which opens the Color Picker, choose whatever color you want, and you're good to go. Of course you can set a second color with a background as well. The trick to drawing a Gradient is to realize that when you click and drag you're specifying where the Gradient should begin and end. I think it will be easiest to see this using the Linear Gradient. If I click and drag over a small distance then you can see that the transition occurs over a very small area. Areas of the image before and after will be a solid color. Only the area that you drag over will feature the transition. If I drag my cursor across the entire image then the transition is spread across a large area, and this is true of the other Gradient Styles as well. If I use the Radiant Gradient over a very small area then it makes a very small circle. If I do it over a large area then the transition is spread out. If you draw at an angle then the transitions will also be at an angle. Practice drawing Gradients. It's really the only way to get a feel for it. Draw them with small transitions, with large transitions, and pretty soon they'll become second nature to you. Although Gradients are of more use to graphic artists, it's something photographers should know how to use because they come in handy, but for creating backgrounds and for creating Layer Masks to limit where an effect will appear and not appear, including when you create a digital split neutral density filter, which we'll cover in another movie. You might also use a Gradient if you want to create a collage of several images and have the edge transitions blend in gradually. What I've done here in this image is to create an image that contains several different images, each on its own Layer. You can see that the Layer Masks for each layer feature Gradients to help these blend together. There will be times when knowing the Gradient Tool will serve you well.