Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Add a Gradient to an Image & Text in Photoshop

Hey there it is, gradient time. And what we want to do is this image here, we've added this cool retro kind of style gradient. I'm going to show you how to do that now in adobe Photoshop. Let's go first up, let's open up to images. Okay, It's in the same color folder. It's called gradient 01 and gradient 02 from Jordan's Andrews. Thank you Jordan. So we're gonna start with gradient 01. We're going to do two things. We're going to add gradient to text and we're going to add it to the image in the background. We'll do the text versus it's the easiest to do. Okay, so we're going to have a full section on doing type a little bit later in the course, but for now, click on this capital T your type tool, click once on your keyboard. Okay. And over here in terms of the font size, pick a font in the font you like. Okay. And size. I've got wine up to about 80. Okay, yours is probably the forwarding the 10 or 12 and over here. Okay, We're going to type in all. I'm gonna put a return in start. Don...

't worry too much about type at the moment to move your type around. We're gonna use our move tool. Okay. And I'm just going to click and drag it around so adding a gradient to this, Changing the color of the font is easy, you can double click it here back in your front but let's look at adding color. Okay to do it. You need your text layer selected, here's mine, It's got the gray box around it and down the bottom here there's one called effects and there's one in here called gradient overlay. Now what you'll find in Photoshop, is that pretty much true of everything you do in Photoshop, there's like three or four different ways of doing the same thing. What I'm trying to do is that I'm trying to give you, I guess like there's about three different ways of applying gradients this way. I feel like it's the most bulletproof in terms of future proofing, it just means it's going to work probably on most circumstances, whereas some of the other gradients don't work in all cases. Anyway, what I'm saying is is that later on? You might go, hey, why didn't he show me that version of this thing and you like it better. It's totally cool do it if you stumble across a different way of doing something totally, there's nothing right or wrong about it. I'm just trying to I guess cut it down to some the usable the most usable versions. So gradient overlay and by default it will depend on what you last had selected. Now what we're gonna do is where it says gradient click on this little arrow here, let's move the mob so we can kind of see this little drop down arrow by default, you've got some horrific drop shadows. Okay, well gradient, Sorry, okay some terrible ones if you need rainbow colored gradients, you my friends are all in luck. Okay, so what we're gonna do is have to go and customize it. So let's start with this first one. Black to white. It's the easiest one to customize. Let's click on the little arrow to pop it back up. So what we want to do now is change the colors used and you do it by clicking in the colo bit here, that's why it's a little bit confusing these ingredients overlay. Okay, so you click on this anywhere in the color box, this thing pops up. Okay, and what we're going to do is use the bottom parts of these houses. Okay, so not the top parts. Use this bottom bit. So let's double click this first color swatch. Okay, and using this hue slider, drag it up, drag it down, find a color that you want to use. I'm gonna use this one. Okay, double click this white house, same thing, drag this hue, slider up and down until you find a color you want to use and then cook in here. Okay, and you'll have that blue to purple or at least magenta I think a cane. Um well let's click Ok again and have a look at some of the settings, so where it says reverse, just flips it top to bottom and we are using the linear style. So it goes in a line from top to bottom, you can adjust that which angle. Okay, you can see now. it's going kind of more left to right from the side to the side, you can decide any size linear. You can play around with radio and you can experiment on your own the different ones, angle reflection. Just kind of different ways. You can see the gradients are on both sides. We're just gonna go for linear in this case. And in terms of the scale, you can lower it down and makes a bit more sense. And then it just got like only a tiny little gradient between these type here. Cool. I'm gonna leave mine at 100%. That's what yours is probably said to now before we do the images. I'm going to show you gradients are kind of back in right? When I guess not even that long ago, maybe 67 years ago, gradients I didn't even have in the class because who used gradients, gradients have come around full circle and are super cool now. Right? Or at least I think so. So where I get my gradient colors from, I'm going to show you a cool little site. It's this side here. It's called gradient. I love it. All it does is just show you examples of cool gradients and and yeah, once you've found one you like, let's say we click through here. Okay, you can see there's a bunch of different options. Okay, I like on page to this one here, it's my favorite one. You'll you'll probably notice it from other videos that I've made. But this is where I get my colors from now to get those colors into Photoshop. The easiest way is set on the bottom here, there's this yellow and pink, so those are the two colors, Right? If you click on it, Okay, that is the number you want this hash and then it's got some letters and some numbers, so just copy that on your keyboard. So my max command C to copy or you can right click and go to copy jump back into Photoshop and in Photoshop, remember when we clicked on to change color, it's that big color bar there, double click the green, blue house. And this is where it goes down here, I'm going to paste it in. I'm gonna paste everything. I don't think we need to hash it doesn't seem to mind it at all. You can see the hashes over here, so that's a that's an easy way to pick a, pick a color from the internet is using these letters and numbers. It's like, okay, I'm gonna jump back into gradient, grab this end here, grab this, I'm gonna leave the hash off, copy it back to Photoshop. Double click this house, grab him, place this one, I love those colors and click. Ok. Okay, okay, again, you can make any last adjustments, but that's it for it doesn't really matter what it is and we've done it for type I'm going to click Ok? But it doesn't really matter what the layer is, there's a little adjustment we need to do for images but if it's a logo you've brought in or a shape from somewhere you've made an illustrator or brought in or drawn up with the shape torch, we're looking a second to do um you can just have it selected down it effects and go to gradient overlay. Now the next thing I want to do is this image in the background and there's a slightly different process. Okay, Because first of all, if I click on background, this effects is great out and this is going to happen through our Photoshop course where you just it's locked. Okay. And it's called background to unlock the background. Doubleclick background. Okay, give it a name. Okay, minus shoes and now it becomes unlocked and I get to add that effects. Okay, so that's half of the thing we need to do. Now click on effects, make sure that layer is selected and go to gradient overlay just like we did before. The only trouble is it's kind of doing exactly what happened here but I can't see the image. So what ends up happening is you need to we've talked about all of this stuff, it's this one here, blending mode. Okay. Blending mode is a way of this gradient blending with the image itself. Okay, so click on normal and just dissolve. Does nothing darken. Does something Okay? And you're just gonna have to work your way through until you find a way a blend that works with your particular gradient and the colors in your image. Now there's no like absolute one you should pick from this. It really depends on your image and the colors in your gradient, It's a bit of a lottery. Okay, so click on multiply, see if that works for you and it's I'm just gonna work way through until I pick something that I like. I'm going to turn the opacity back up color burn. Let me burn. You're just gonna watch me now go through them all Light and I kind of like, it's kind of got that retro 80's but in that kind of hipster freeway, it's hard to explain. Right, the gradients are cool. Now lighten, I know screen is kind of a nice one, color dodge. Not so good. Okay, I'm not going to go through every single one of them because I decided either like hard light or I liked screen and that's totally sorry lighten, That's totally just based on my gradients and my images and I'm going to leave it there. So that's the difference between doing images and just say straight off text or shape. Okay, is that first of all you need your layer unlocked, then you add the effect like you do normally and just make sure when you do add your gradient, you change the blending mode before I go Probably super important point that I haven't brought out yet is say you want to adjust this gradient now, Okay I'll turn it off, see all star here, you can kind of see the structure, that's my whole layer and these are the effects. I can turn either the effect or the gradient itself off to show through that original red color. Okay so what we can do to edit it so to turn it off, that's all you need to do. Just leave it there. Okay? But to edit it, I'm gonna have the eyeball on double click, the word gradient, overlay. Double click and you'll see it's gray here and it's got a little tick. Okay you might be accidentally on something else so I'm gonna unstick that, make sure this is gray. Okay and that's where you can go and make adjustments so let's say that I don't like that anymore so I'm going to reverse it or play with a different blending modes as well. Okay but that's how you make adjustments. Okay I'm probably going to turn it off and make this back to wait. Okay so text selected my little properties panel here would tell me what color that I'm using. I clicked on it and to get white just as a little other thing before we go is watch this any of these hues, it doesn't matter if I click hold and drag and I'm dragging kind of past where I need it because up in the top left is white and down in the bottom left is black. So what I do is instead of trying to like some people are just trying to click in there and you get it pretty close but if you click hold and drag past, I'm holding my mouse down and dragging it past that assures its white. All right, I'm gonna click OK and if you want to tidy this effects up so I've turned it off so you can't see it but say that you're pedantic and you've got a bit of O. C. D. And you want to get rid of this, you can click hold and drag it to this trash can and that will get rid of it. Alright so it's project time. I'd like you to practice using this one here. Okay so I don't mind what text you use but definitely play around with the gradient. Okay. On the image. Okay go to grab it and pick a color, Pick your own colors. You can you can do your own colors and I'd like to actually see it this time though. We've been doing you've been following me along. What I'd like you to do is I'd love to see your own one so dig through your files and see if you can find an image that you're happy to share. Okay and um it can be your family, it can be your house, you can you can take a quick photo now of yourself, okay. And just I want to see what kind of gradients and stuff you're doing and you need to post it here on this page or you can share it with me on social media, on instagram is bring your own laptop, okay? Or on twitter. It's dan loves adobe. Either way, do an image can be, this one can be your own one and I'd like to see what you've done. All right. That is going to be the end of this one. Let's jump into the next video. I'll see you over by