Gradients

Quick reference

• 00:04 So now that we've covered some of the ways that we can apply colors either by double
• 00:09 clicking here or using the color picker or even our swatches,
• 00:12 I would like to introduce you guys to gradients.
• 00:15 So the first thing I'm going to do is press l on the keyboard to get my
• 00:17 ellipse tool, and I'm going to hold shift and just drag out a fairly large circle.
• 00:24 Now by default, it will just be a white circle with a black stroke.
• 00:27 So I'm going to press x and remove the stroke or choose none.
• 00:30 And then we'll press x again to have our fill color.
• 00:34 Now just below this,
• 00:36 you'll see a couple of options right in the middle is the gradient option.
• 00:40 A few other ways that you could access this,
• 00:42 are by clicking over here on the gradient panel.
• 00:45 Or by coming up to the Window menu, and choosing Gradients.
• 00:49 Or another way is to use the keyboard shortcut Cmd or Ctrl+F9.
• 00:52 Now, once you do that, you'll see this dialog box pop up here.
• 00:58 And right off the bat, you'll have a black to white gradient but
• 01:01 there's a lot of cool stuff that you can do with these.
• 01:04 Now the first thing to notice here is that you can actually reverse the gradient and
• 01:08 have it go the opposite way.
• 01:10 You also have control over the angle.
• 01:12 So if you wanted the gradient to be 90 degrees or
• 01:15 say -90 degrees, you can type in that as well.
• 01:20 And you also notice that we have a slider here.
• 01:23 Now this slider is pretty cool because you can move it around and
• 01:26 choose the distance that you want some of these colors to go.
• 01:28 If you want it to be more black with less white on the end,
• 01:31 you can move the slider towards the right.
• 01:33 Or if you want it to be more white and
• 01:35 less black, you can move it towards the opposite direction.
• 01:38 And that's also going to be reflected down here where it says location.
• 01:42 Okay but if you ever want to reset that, you can just go right to 50% and
• 01:46 it'll place the slider back in the middle.
• 01:49 So another cool thing that we have here is the ability to
• 01:53 change the type of gradient from a linear gradient to a radial gradient.
• 01:57 And again, you can reverse it.
• 01:59 You can change the angle or you can type in a value.
• 02:03 And you also have this aspect ratio here which will basically choose
• 02:08 how squished or tight you want this gradient to be.
• 02:12 If you want it to be more sharp towards the center,
• 02:14 you will choose a lower aspect ratio.
• 02:17 Or if you want it to be really large, you can choose a large aspect ratio.
• 02:21 You can also manually input any number here.
• 02:24 But by default, let's just leave it at 100 for now.
• 02:27 Now coming back to what I was saying before, we can reverse this but
• 02:32 another cool thing that we can do is if we press G on the keyboard,
• 02:36 we can get our gradient tool.
• 02:38 And what I can do with this now is I can click and drag any where outside of
• 02:42 the shape or inside the shape to choose kind of the origin of the gradient.
• 02:48 So if I wanted to start all the way out here and just barely come into the edge,
• 02:52 I can do that.
• 02:53 If I wanted to extend further, I'll click and drag further into the shape.
• 02:59 But I also have this bar here which allows me to kind of move this and
• 03:02 extend the gradient manually.
• 03:05 And I can also play around with the positioning of that origin point.
• 03:14 So this is some of the cool things that you can do with that.
• 03:17 And another cool thing that we can do here is that gradients don't only have to be
• 03:21 applied to fill colors.
• 03:22 If I go ahead and swap these, so that I press Shift and X,
• 03:25 I can actually apply this gradient to a stroke.
• 03:29 Now you may not be able to tell here, but if I click on my stroke panel,
• 03:33 I can increase the weight of this line so that you guys can see what's happening.
• 03:37 Now I'll come back over to my gradient here, or
• 03:39 maybe change it to a linear gradient.
• 03:42 So now you can see how I've applied a gradient to an outline,
• 03:46 which is another cool option.
• 03:47 And you also have some of these ways that you can change it in a gradient panel
• 03:53 such as apply gradient within the stroke, apply gradient along the stroke or
• 03:58 apply the gradient across the stoke.
• 04:00 So each one of those will produce a slightly different or unique look.
• 04:06 Okay but let's just go back to having this for our fill color.
• 04:09 Now I am going to select my fill and then change it to a radial gradient again.
• 04:15 And this time I am going to select this white color all the way to the left.
• 04:19 Okay, now you'll notice down here that we have opacity and location.
• 04:24 And the opacity for this color is set to 100.
• 04:27 But if I select the black end of the spectrum here,
• 04:30 I can change the opacity down to 0.
• 04:35 Okay. And if I double click on that,
• 04:37 I can actually change this to white.
• 04:40 If I move this off of the canvas for a moment,
• 04:42 you'll see that it's now a gradient that goes from solid white in the center to
• 04:47 completely transparent on the edges.
• 04:50 So you have a lot of control over the gradients, their opacity,
• 04:54 their size, the direction that they come from, as well as the type of gradient.
• 04:57 But let's say I wanted to add some color to this.
• 05:00 Well I can double click on this slider, choose this little menu on the top right,
• 05:06 and then we can choose from RGB, HSB, or CMYK or even Web Safe RGB colors.
• 05:13 For now let's just choose RGB.
• 05:14 And I'm gonna play around with these sliders a little bit
• 05:17 until I get some colors here that I like.
• 05:20 So maybe we'll use kind of a blue color for this end of the spectrum.
• 05:23 And then double click on the white, come back to that menu in the top right and
• 05:27 once again choose RGB.
• 05:29 And this time we'll choose maybe a lighter blue like that.
• 05:33 Now what's cool is that I can click along this slider to add as many or
• 05:37 as few colors as I want.
• 05:39 And as I do that I can change each color individually.
• 05:43 And I can also change the order of these colors just by moving the sliders
• 05:46 around, okay?
• 05:49 And again just like when we only have two colors,
• 05:51 you'll notice these diamonds on top of the slider that will
• 05:54 control how far you want these colors to run into one another.
• 05:59 So you really have a lot of control over your gradients when you do this.
• 06:03 Changing the order, adding or taking colors away.
• 06:06 If I wanted to remove this color, all I'd have to do is simply drag down.
• 06:10 But sometimes having more colors makes it look even better.
• 06:18 And it's very easy to click into each one of these individually and add more.
• 06:23 So let's say I wanted to add a fourth color on the end here.
• 06:25 I'm just going to move these closer together.
• 06:27 Click just below the slider.
• 06:28 Double-click to bring up my color picker.
• 06:32 And then I can move these around just by making a few adjustments.
• 06:38 Again, I can reverse this.
• 06:40 Or I can manually press G to get my gradient tool and
• 06:44 choose where I want this gradient to start and where I want it to end.
• 06:50 And I can also make it apply it to a stroke.
• 06:55 But usually you won't really notice the difference with a radial gradient
• 06:59 the same way that you will with a linear gradient.
• 07:04 But let's say I wanted to add some custom colors to this.
• 07:07 Well, that's pretty easy to do, too.
• 07:08 All I would have to do is double click, pick a color that I like,
• 07:12 let's say I wanted to add a yellow here.
• 07:15 And then I would just simply click and drag this over here to my gradient slider.
• 07:21 Now you won't see that change reflected in the shape because I don't have it
• 07:24 selected.
• 07:25 But if I now create a new shape, you'll see that color has been added.
• 07:31 So let's work off of this copy.
• 07:34 Now, I'm just gonna take a few of these colors out, maybe reverse it, and
• 07:39 change the direction that it's coming from here.
• 07:44 Right, I can have it come from the top like that.
• 07:48 And if at any point, if I have a gradient that I like or
• 07:50 that I wanna save, I can actually add this to my swatches.
• 07:56 So again like we did earlier on, I can create a new group.
• 07:59 And you'll see it will add both of those colors that are used in our gradient
• 08:02 automatically.
• 08:04 And now it will add both of those colors to my custom folder.
• 08:07 So there's a lot of different things that you can do with these gradients.
• 08:10 Linear gradients, radial gradients, using them either as a fill or a stroke color.
• 08:16 And saving them as custom swatches.
• 08:18 So those are some of the ways that you can apply color to any kind of shapes or
• 08:22 texts in Adobe Illustrator.
• 08:24 By using gradients, it will really start to add some depth and
• 08:27 value to your shapes and help to bring your designs to life.

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