What I did not get it that after doing the gradient, and turning the quick mask off, the selection seemed to be revered, a rectangular marquee at bottom of image instead of top.
Then draw the gradient the other way, invert your selection or double-click on the Quickmask icon in the toolbar to get the options and choose between "Masked Areas" or "Seleceted areas" whichever you prefer
Also, adjusting falloff with free transform,
You must still be in Quickmask mode to do this
what is the rule on that?
The gradient starts where you started and ends where you end…
Any great literature on gradients? Yet to see a book go in depth with them
IMHO, there’s not enough depth there to make a book (even a thin one)
Excellent info Rene:
you cleared out most of my questions there. Only thing don’t agree or understand is last point. Example:
1/2 body portrait of man. I start at the eyes and pull down to the lips, and yet, the gradient starts way above, at top of image, and goes down to the nose. I don’t get it.
I’m just amazed at this trick with quickmask and gradients. Before this, I found it real hard to deal with gradients.
Also, curious main difference between blank and white, and foreground to background. they seem to be the two most popular gradients. thanks!
1/2 body portrait of man. I start at the eyes and pull down to the lips, and yet, the gradient starts way above, at top of image, and goes down to the nose.
The end colours of the gradient is repeated to the ends of the image, think about it.
In your example, if the gradient starts with black, you will have black above the eyes and white below the nose
what are end colors, that was hard to follow — thanks Rene. almost get it.
Scottie,
Rene means the colors at either end of a gradient. If you have a gradient that just goes from black to white, black will be extended to the edges on one side and white on the other.
When you draw the gradient you are selecting the range of the gradient not the distance of the fill. The tool assumes you wish to fill the canvas. To restrict the affected area you would need to draw the gradient inside a selection. The gradient would then remain within that selected area.
Photo:
very cool. almost get it.
So when you draw from point a to b, from forehead to chin, that is not telling photoshop where to begin and end the gradient. "not the distance"…
what then does that mean, ‘you are selecting the range" and what mean, "tool assumes want to fill the canvas" thanks!!
scottie g.,
if you make a selection from forehead to chin, the gradient will be contrained to that. if you do it with no selection, the gradient tool will use the "default" selection, which is the entire canvas.
by dragging the gradient tool from forhead to chin with no selection, you give the gradient tool the direction and the point at which to start transitioning from the start color to the end color (say black and white for example) so from the edge of the image traveling in the direction of your drag (forehead to chin) you’ll get the start color… then starting at the forehead you’ll transition towards your end color. by the time the gradient gets to the chin, you would be at the end color and the gradient tool – because it’s NOT contrained by a selection – will continue to fill to the end of the canvas with the end color.
so from top edge to forhead will be black fill, from forehead to chin you get your gradient, from chin to bottom of image you’ll get white fill.
use a selection to constrain the gradient if you just want it to apply from forehead to chin.
hope that’s clearer.
dave
double post. haven’t done that for a while! 🙂
<homer>D’oh!</homer>
That was great Dave. It really helped. I always found it confusing that a gradient would start way above where I started it. So if you just wanted a gradient in half of your image then you would recommend using a marquee selection?
Do people often use gradients like that, on just part of an image? thanks!
no problem scottie.
So if you just wanted a gradient in half of your image then you would recommend using a marquee selection?
yup. you can restrict it any way you want with a selection or even better, with a layer mask. (better because the mask acts like a selection, with the added benifit that you can adjust it later on by painting on the mask with black and white to modify it).
Do people often use gradients like that, on just part of an image? thanks!
often enough, i think. i’m not a pro designer, i’m just a humble programmer and photoshop hobbiest, so my methods might not be exactly "orthodox". 🙂
i often get a selection then feather it then apply the gradient, so it’s a smoother tranasition.
chris cox and mac forum regular jason smith once told me of a great way to do a feather selection that i haven’t forgotten. get your selection set, create a layer mask from it (button at the bottom of the layers palette), add a small radius gaussian blur to the mask, use the levels command on the mask to fine tune it.
you can get some neat effects with that and the gradient. or even with a gradient adjustment layer. like taking a color picture and blending it with a black and white sketch of the same pic (see filters> photocopy for a start…) in the direction of the gradient, etc.
thanks Dave:
you have seen Katrin Eismanns book on masking, it’s a killer. the whole feathering thing, and using guassian is in there, but I’m still not sure how much to feather ( or do gaussian) — it’s so subjective
no, i’ve not seen the book. heard of it…
blurring a mask can have DRAMATIC effects. did you try it? after blurring use levels to fine tune the ‘feather’ effect.
yea, you could do it on a quick mask too, but doing it on a layer mask means you can go back and change it later if you want to… 🙂
nice one pierre! thanks!
dave
