PTotD

Tip# 128. Gradients are a great way to put a little more interest into a background. Give this a try. Open a document and put in a ho-hum kind of background. Create a new layer above it. Select black or some dark color from your swatches and then select the Gradient tool. The Keyboard shortcut is the letter G. You might get the paint bucket first, but you want the Gradient tool. Then go to the options bar and select from the second drop-down from the left to set the kind of gradient. The first choice is from a foreground color to white, and the second one is from the foreground color to transparent. You want to use the transparent option. Then look at the icons.to the right of that. The first one is a horizontal gradient, the second is a radial gradient, the third is Angle, the next is reflected and the last one is diamond. If you hover your cursor over the icons, you’ll see a name pop up. The one you want for this is the radial gradient. Next, click inside your layout somewhere around 10:00 and drag down towards 4:30. A line will appear, indicating the direction of the gradient. When you release the drag, a layer of color will appear that fades from your start color and start point down to transparent at the end point. Whee!!! If you want it to be darker or lighter, select a different color, change the opacity of the layer, or make the drag line start and end in different places.