Gradiants, a couple of questions.

[sagedavis]

I have a problem with gradiants..

I am on a laptop with a sensor bad as a mouse, so, even the slightest of movements causes my gradient to move.

How do I maintain a straight up and down or left and right line with my gradiant. Is there a way to lock it in place?

Also, has anyone yet created a way to make multiple colors within the same gradient? If not, will it ever be created?

Thanks

Sage

[Rick Brewster]

After selecting the Gradient tool, but before you start drawing, you'll see this in the status bar...

Gradient: Click and drag to start drawing. Holding shift constrains the angle. Right mouse button reverses colors.

(Emphasis added)

The contraint is to a multiple of 15 degrees (0, 15, 30, 45, 60, etc.).

In general, the shift key is the constraint modifier key.

[sagedavis]

Thanks Rick,

Note to self... start looking in the status bar...

You can file this under the "dumb question" folder... :-)

Thanks again.

[MadJik]

And for the second question:multiple colors

1.set the tolerance to 0%

2.draw a first gradient (black to white)

3.select the white end. select another primary color (blue).

4.right-click to draw another gradient (white to blue)

5.etc...

[Crazy Man Dan]

For multi-stage gradients, you can still use ye olde ways.

Create a new image, 2 pixels wide and as many pixels tall as the stages you want your gradient to have. For instance, this example used a 5-stage gradient, red - orange - yellow - green - blue, and as such was created 5 pixels tall.

In each row, use the Pencil tool to color both pixels the color of that stage of the gradient.

Resize using bilinear sampling to however wide / tall you need the final gradient.

Copy and paste!

For instance, here's the five-stage gradient I mentioned. The left side is the image pre-resize, zoomed to 1600%. The right side is the final result, resized to 160 pixels tall.

You can read the original tutorial here:

http://www.freewebs.com/cmdsketchpad/gradient2.htm

[sagedavis]

CMD, 8 million thumbs up to that one.

I know I answer a lot of questions on here, but, I still am pretty new to doing graphics, (other than 3d ones that is), so, really, this is a new trick to me.

I had made a rainbow before by doing a bunch of boxes and then blur, but, this one is way better as you really get to control the size of each step.

Thanks to all who have answered, these are really helpful.

Sage