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About this lesson
How to apply linear and radial gradients.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Gradients - Instructions.docx58.9 KB Gradients - Exercise.ai
1.1 MB Gradients - Exercise Solution.ai
1.5 MB
Quick reference
Gradients
How to apply linear and radial gradients.
When to use
Gradients can be used to imply light or add depth and value to any shapes, text, or objects in an Illustrator document.
Instructions
- Begin by opening the 'Gradients - Exercise.ai' file.
- Create a large circle by selecting your Ellipse Tool (L) and holding down the Shift Key while dragging out a shape.
- Open up the Gradient Panel from the right side of the interface.
- Apply a Linear Gradient to the shape, and then try to add a Radial Gradient.
- Try changing the colors used in the gradients to customize it, and play with the sliders to alter the appearance.
- Try to change the gradient from the fill to the stroke and notice how you can only apply Linear Gradients to a stroke.
- Experiment with the opacity settings in your gradient to create solid-to-transparent type gradients.
Hints & tips
- Once you apply a gradient to a shape, text, or other object, you can press 'G' on the keyboard to select the Gradient Tool which allows you to change the direction/origin of your gradient for an even greater variety of looks.
- 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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