Fabulous Fades

What's a gradient?

Simply put, a gradient means to blend one color into another. Photoshop comes with several gradient options built-in, though the one I use the most is Linear. Using some simple Thanksgiving-ish color bars, here are some examples of linear fades:

Left or right fade

Top or bottom fade

Left or right angle fade

Here are some things to remember when playing with the Gradient tool:

• The direction of the fade depends upon the *direction* you drag the Gradient tool across an image.
• The size of the blended area depends upon how *far* you drag the Gradient tool across an image.
• The starting point of the fade depends upon *where* you start dragging in the image.

Pair the power of the Gradient tool with a layer mask, which allows you to hide bits of an image or shape without deleting any pixels, and you can begin to see how incredibly useful a gradient mask can be. By using this method to create fades, you can control how the photo, shape, or graphic fades in or out without harming any pixels. And you can keep playing with a gradient mask to get just the right fade effect until your eyes bleed.

Step 1: Pop open a sad turkey photo in Photoshop. This one from iStockphoto certainly fits the beak, er, bill ;)

Step 3: Create a layer mask by pressing the circle within a square icon at the bottom of your layers palette (circled below in red). This is the mask onto which we're about to apply a gradient to get a fade. This is what my layers palette looks like now:

Step 5: Make sure the layer mask is still selected in your Layers Palette (it will have a hairline border around it, as shown above in the screen shot for Step 3). Mouse over to your document and with the Gradient tool crosshair, drag from the top of the black bit downward about half an inch, and release the mouse button.

TIP: Hold the Shift key while you drag to lock the gradient into a perfectly straight line.

Spend some time experimenting with the length of the drag and the starting point. Just keep dragging and dragging until you get the fade you want; the mask will update each time you drag with the Gradient tool. Flexibility is king, baby!

Here's my document and layers palette after setting some type. I've circled the gradient mask in red:

If the Save Our Turkey coalition wanted to add their logo to the piece, I might do something like this:

The gradient mask is circled in red above so you can understand how I created the fade.

Diagonal and horizontal fade

Okay, here's one more example for you. This time I filled an entire layer with black and I'm going to make the fade begin further down into the document. Since I'm going for a more gradual fade, I'll drag downward a bit farther. You can see where my drag started and stopped below:

Next, I added a layer mask to the sad turkey layer and with the Gradient tool I dragged at an angle from the beak to the logo at the bottom right. This makes the SOT logo more visible because the right corner of the turkey photo is being hidden by the gradient mask. Note the differences in the two masks circled below in red.