Unconventional ways to use: Gradient tool

Hi all--
As a newbie to Photoshop, I'm looking for ways to use the Gradient tool in ways that might not be so obvious. I'm hoping for experienced users to answer this to help me discover my own techniques. Now the gradient tool seems to be somewhat limited, so I thought I'd ask. Surely there's a few users that, on certain occasions, use this in a way that I might not know about.
If you feel like helping me, I'd appreciate it very much. Thanks all.
-rocipo
(Mods: If I'm breaking any rules or am posting in the wrong forum, please move this to the appropriate forum or delete as necessary.)

Here are links to a couple of cool things I found:
Angle gradients:
Gradient mapping:

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How can i use gradient tool in Illustrator

Hello,
I am trying to use gradient tool in illustrator.
My image is active but how can i start using gradient tool.
I clicked the tool and tried to drag with my mouse but, i can not activate the tool itself.
Can any one help me, I am using CS4 extended with Mac.
Thank you very much.
Steve

First in order to use the gradient tool you must have a gradient fill applied to an object not an raster image it can be a vector illustration..
Select the object or objects or groups of objects
Now click on the gradient bar in the Gradient Panel while the object(s) are still selected that will fill the object with the default gradient.
You can also use a gradient swatch in the Swatches panel, you can make a gradient swatch as well.
Now your object(s) is filled with the default gradient fill.
Now in the tool panel select the gradient tool this will allow you to control the way the gradient is oriented and applied to the object.
Now you can change the colors and add colors to you gradient by clicking on the color markers below the gradient bar which will bring up the color or swatches panels.
Now finally and this is the most important factor to consider you have to purchase a book and or tutorials and the book that will probably do you the most good at this stage is Mordy Golding's Real World Illustrator CS 4 this you shoud do before you go any further. Honest.

Unable to use gradient tool on placed photo Photoshop CS Trial

I placed a jpg photo over another photo and attempted to use gradient tool tool but it indicated cannot smart object cannot be edited directly. It gives me a circle with a line through it with this statement. I am operating a trial version of CS5 on Windows XP. What am I missing. Use to use CS3 and Photoshop 5.0. Must be another step. Cannot answer.

You could double click on the smart object icon to edit the smart object contents
or rasterize the the smart object.
You could also use a gradient overlay layer style or gradint fill adjustment layer.
More about smart objects:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSCCBCA4AB-7821-4986-BC03-4D1045EF2A57a.htm l
MTSTUNER

CS6 how to use gradient Tool for outline

Hi!
I am a graphic designer I like to work hand and not numbers. The new version of Ai CS6 gradients can be given for strokes. Great!
Please help me how exactly I can do it with a convenient tool 'Gradient Tool'?
Does not respond to changes in drag when I try to use the mouse to outline?
In advertising and instructions CS6 somehow strange is described ... I do not understand.
http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/gradient-panel-gradient-tool-overview.html
Regards!

@Ivan David: Thank you for your response. I asked for something else. How to use the "Gradient Tool" no gradient palete. Why are chceck "ON" you own answer as helpful?
As I explained I am a graphic designer will create a hands than numbers. I do not understand why no tool "gradient tool" works to fill but it does not work on outline.
If I get a chance to show off with a representative of Adobe's a bit like crying...
We need fair and real changes. According to me the most to do is to think about using Illustrator for themselves of their creators Illustrator.
* For example in work with new gradient tool.
- Why when you edit the gradient for the outline of the object is displayed slider gradient fill???. It's confusing and totally unnecessary.
- Why is the Gradient Tool Outline tool does not work???
- Why Control bar does not drop the Gradient icon??? What is the control bar when no controls? Control Bar cool idea but how would the developers were thinking of him as a stranger?
- Why still the option of working with the gradient tool to fill, when you edit a color marker, I can not turn on the Eyedropper tool to select a color from another object???
- Why does the apperance in the attributes panel stoke attribute does not appear easy gradient of a potential of gradient palette???
- Why can not I fast copy between objects only attribute gradient???
After all, it's easy and does not require a great job developers reach a solution to the function. I know that my naive questions now, and nobody I will not answer to them but sorrow grows. Sometimes I feel like a fly in pitch.
This is not normal.
So many years have passed, there was a lot of new tools but Adobe wants to use the same techniques as in his first product. Refresh in the new 64 bit version is also not so different to that in compared to regular equipment and are currently using...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3TDmvZma84
Sorry for the harsh words of criticism, But your answer is a perfect example that Adobe does not know what's going to people who work with Illustrator on a daily basis and as can be seen starting to irritate me tight.
Perhaps I have exaggerated expectations about the tools Adobe. I understand that there is so much work and needs, but I lack only a change of thinking about working with tools in Illustartor and reducing unnecessary clicks. Now, instead of tools to work with each other often exclusive and force running around.
Regards!

Issues using gradient tool & reflection on a logo?

I'm getting this error message when trying to use the gradient tool on this reflection for this new logo I'm working on to help blend it more.
Also, I prefer to butt the reflection logo right up to the bottom of the main logo, but when I do, the bottom stem of the F overlaps & makes it look weird:
suggestions?

You could just make just the 'f' character superscripted, assuming you like the rest of the font characteristics.
Note that .com when flipped seems to read "cow", which may not be good. It distracts from the name.
-Noel

Is there a way to use eraser tool with soft edges?

Hi,
I am wanting to erase the edges of a rectangular object so that it blends better with the background, and am wondering if there is a way of doing this using the eraser tool with soft edges?
Here is a snapshot to illustrate further what I mean:
You should be able to see that above the curve on the left there is a gradient which extends to the top of the image. This is the rectangle which I have applied a gradient to. At the top of the rectangle the colour is the same as the background. What I am trying to do is to blend the left edge of the rectangle in with the background above the curve (below the curve there is a line so no blending is needed). The way I thought of doing this is using the eraser tool with a soft edge. I can do this in Photoshop, but I'm not sure if this is possible or the best approach in Illustrator.
I would be grateful for any advice on this,
Thanks,
Nick

I don't really understand yoru end goal. However, the answer to yoru Eraser Tool question is no. There is no such thing as a "soft edge" for the eraser tool.
The ways to blend objects in specific areas only would be:
Gradients with transparent stop
Gradient mesh with transparency nodes
Opacity masks
Fake it by blending to the same color as the background.

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Is there a way to use gradient colors in Muse? I keep reading that you can but there is no instructions that I can find how to do it.

I found it.

Gradient tool problem

I have installed adobe illustrator cs5 on a pavilion dv6 HP laptop computer but when I use gradient tool in my projects It makes a fragmented gradient surface insted of a smooth surface. I guess It is a graphic problem. But I dont know How can I fix it...
How can helps me...

Number of things this could be, a screenshot in your reply would help narrow this down
Is your monitor set to display enough colors see control panel >> display
Does the gradient look banded in your gradients pallette also
How many stops do you have in your gradient and what colors are they
Do you have to few a change in colors over a large distance
Your monitor may need calibration
You may be using a color profile with a narrow gamut of colors
Does the same gradient copied and pasted into Photoshop look banded

Using the Gradient tool to change button text

I have had a request to change the text on a number of buttons on the website that I am maintaining. I thought it would be a simple case of cropping the text, editing this using the background colour and then pasting back in. The background colour, however, seems to be graduated so when I paste it back in, it doesn't match. What is the easiest way of using the Gradient tool to achieve this?
Sorry if this seems a bit on a 'RTFM' request, but time is of the essence.
Thanks.

I see, the buttons are all pixels at this point.
That's still pretty easy...
1. Edit the text out of the original button by duplicating the part of the button that doesn't have text over it. You can just use the rectangular marquee and duplicate some of the gradient to the right or left of the text and move it over the text. It will take a little care, but it's pretty easy if you work zoomed-in.
2. Determine what font they were using through a site like http://www.whatthefont.com. In this case it looks like a pretty close match to Tahoma Bold.
3. Choose the Text tool and type the same text, then use the various adjustments in the CHARACTER panel to get it to match very closely. Looks like it needs to be horizontally scaled in width to 110% or so.
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Any way to use a quick and dirty icon like cLabel in the quick tools toolbar?

I am a javascript cut-and-paster with ability to cobble things together.
In previous versions of Acrobat, I had tools that were added to the toolbar using the technique shown in this script:
app.addToolButton({cName: "MyFlattenButton",
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   cEnable: "event.rc = (app.doc != null);",
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That would create a toolbar button with the "icon" that read "Flatten" which is all that I needed. I could click on it and it would flatten all pages in the document.
I used this to create several different tools, all with different names and cLabels.
This script still works in Acrobat XI (it adds the tool to the add-on tools list, and then I can add it from there to the quick tools toolbar). The cLabel names show up in the add-on tools list, but not in the quick tools toolbar. In the toolbar they all use the same generic icon (but they all work correctly).
From reading in this forum I see that there is a way to create a custom icon but it does not look easy. Is there any simple way to just have text appear as the icon as I used to do for earlier versions of Acrobat?
Thanks.

One further question...
I found a code snippet somewhere online that attempted to deal with this issue. That led me to this (failed) solution:
this.importIcon("myIconFlat", "/D/J/CAD Standards/Stamps/Acrobat tools/flatten.jpg", 0);
var flatIcon = util.iconStreamFromIcon(this.getIcon("myIconFlat"));
app.addToolButton({cName: "MyFlattenButton",
   cLabel: "Flatten",
   oIcon: flatIcon,
   cEnable: "event.rc = (app.doc != null);",
   cExec: "flattenPages();"
The problem there is that importIcon is not allowed from a folder-level javascript, apparently. Would there be any way to use the importIcon part of this from the console and then cut and paste some output into the rest of the script? Just looking for a way to get the icon into my script.

Way to use Visual Web part in sharepoint 2010 without using/installing third party tools

I want to know the way to use Visual Web part in sharepoint 2010 without using/installing third party tools.
Please provide me a link where i can actually know how it is done.

+ to _eNo_,
Visual Studio 2010 has support for visual webpart, you can find that under Visual C# node in the Installed Templates section (if your preferred language is C#)
Hope this helps!
Ram - SharePoint Architect
Blog - SharePointDeveloper.in
Please vote or mark your question answered, if my reply helps you

I'm using gradient mesh tool

Hi. I'm learning how use gradient mesh. the problem I'm having is there is one anchor point on one of my paths that keeps going back to white. I select it with the white arrow and use the eyedropper tool to replace the color, switch to a new anchor, then go back to the original anchor point and it becomes white again. I have even tried deleting the anchor point and replacing it and it encounters the same problem. Any ideas how I can fix this?

We can't know. You have not provided any screenshot, no info about what version of AI, no system info.
Mylenium

Please comment - we are planning to use GG in unconventional way to replica

Please comment - we are planning to use GG in unconventional way to replicate all changes except the purge on source
Hi we have source and target DB. We want GG to replicate all changes on source to target. But we purge monthly data from source but we don’t want that to be replicated to the target because we use target exclusively for reporting. This target will have all the live data from source as well the data that is purged from the source. To accomplish this we are using USER1 to perform all operations on source except the monthly purge, for monthly purge we are planning to use USER2. We want GG to replicate only what USER1 is doing and NOT what USER2 is doing.
We did a POC and it seemed to work. Before we actually implement this want to run this by the community if anyone had similar requirement and how you achieved it?
What concerns us is after the first month’s purge the source and target are a bit different, so we may end up writing tons of validation processes to make sure GG wont delete anything from Target.
Thanks for your time and comments.

Thanks for all your comments. In theory and POC we were able to gain some understanding. Have you folks implemented scenario like this?
As a follow up question, what do you recommend I should use to compare my source and target to verify that OGG did not delete what USER2 has done in source is NOT replicated in Target. We dont have Veridata so that option is ruled out. Thanks.

Illustrator CS6 crashes ,on my mac, when I use the gradient tool. Any help out there?

My illustrator cs6 crashes when I use the gradient tool. I'm using a mac with mac os 10.9.3.
This driving me mad... any help out there?

mr.roo,
The following is a general list of things you may try when the issue is not in a specific file (you may have tried/done some of them already); 1) and 2) are the easy ones for temporary strangenesses, and 3) and 4) are specifically aimed at possibly corrupt preferences); 5) is a list in itself, and 6) is the last resort.
1) Close down Illy and open again;
2) Restart the computer (you may do that up to 3 times);
3) Close down Illy and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Cmd+Option+Shift during startup (easy but irreversible);
4) Move the folder (follow the link with that name) with Illy closed (more tedious but also more thorough and reversible);
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Even more seriously, you may:
6) Uninstall, run the Cleaner Tool (if you have CS3/CS4/CS5/CS6/CC), and reinstall.
http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html

Problem using Radial Gradient tool in Creative Suite CS4.

I have pasted on a separate layer a circular photo of a couple's head and shoulders onto a woodland photo, and want to make the sides of it gradiently transparent using the Radial Gradient tool. The problem I have is that it makes all of the photo gradiently transparent.
If I use the Linear Gradient tool it works fine, but only on one part and I can't add it to other parts of the photo.
Am I using the right tool for the job, and if I am, where am I going wrong?
Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

here I send 2 versions, one is the hand done one as I mentioned, before, re mask then use black brush, the second is the circle feather edge again as mentioned but I left in the layers to give you an idea too
the first allows you more freedom to kill background as I notice the top is flat, I assume that's the edge if the original photo

Unconventional ways to use: Gradient tool

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