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I’ve had a few questions recently from people struggling to effectively and accurately utilise the gradient tool on Adobe Photoshop. There’s a much easier tool, especially for beginners, for adding gradients however.
What we’re going to be looking at here is called the Gradient Overlay tool, found in the layer blending options. You can access the gradient overlay function by right clicking on any layer, selecting ‘blending options’, and from there checking the box entitled ‘gradient overlay’.
You’ll need to make sure you also click on the words ‘gradient overlay’ to take you to the settings section for that effect, otherwise you’ll just be applying it without being able to edit the settings.
Once in the settings panel, you’ll have the ability to change several individual characteristics of your gradient, the first characteristic you’ll probably want to edit will be the colours, you can edit these using the drop-down box and can choose from pre-determined custom colours or several pre-loaded colour schemes. You’ll also be able to change the direction of your gradient with much more ease that is afforded by the regular gradient tool, as well as being able to change the style (linear, reflected, circular, etc), the scale and the opacity of your gradient.
Finally you can change the blending mode from here, however this is just the for the overlay not the entire layer. You can create some great effects with this, for instance if you set the blend mode to ‘overlay’ then put an image behind it.
The gradient overlay tool is particularly useful in web design, as it’s great when doing buttons, navigation bars and social media links.
The gradient overlay feature is useful for any graphic designs, i use it particularly in poster design, logo design or infographic design.
I find that this technique can work really well when combined with other blending options, such as ‘bevel and emboss’, and can create photorealistic effects.
Have a play and see what you can come up with, i’m sure you’ll find the gradient overlay tool an extremely useful addition to your toolset.