InDesign The Tools Palette - Part 7

The Gradient Tool and the Gradient Palette.

The Gradient Tool

The Gradient tool works hand in hand with that palette. All you have to do is to select an object with the Selection tool. Then select the Gradient tool and start dragging it from the point you want the gradient to start to the point you want it to finish. Et voilat, you have your gradient. You can apply gradients to fills and to strokes. Before you drag though, you need to make your gradient and then you can use it.

The Gradient Palette VS the Gradient Tool

Here is a rundown of the differences in applying a gradient with the Gradient tool instead of with the Gradient palette:

1. If you apply a gradient to an object with the Gradient tool, the gradient will start where you start dragging and stop where you stop dragging. If you have a gradient which goes from white to black for example, you will see that all the points before you start dragging will be pure white, while all the points after you stopped dragging will be pure black. To the contrary applying a gradient with the Gradient palette will result in the gradient being applied across the whole item, so your white will start right at the border of your item, all of the colours in between will stretch along your item and your black will appear right at the end of you item. Try it out yourself and see what happens.
2. The Gradient tool is less precise than the Gradient palette. Let’s say you want to apply a gradient with an angle of 32 degrees. You just select your object then go to the Gradient palette and apply your gradient as per lesson 3. Then you simply type 32 where it says Angle. Now try to apply a gradient with the gradient tool with the same angle. Good luck… Of course you can apply a gradient with your Gradient tool and then change its angle with the Gradient palette and vice versa. However you can have.
3. The Gradient palette allows you to apply either a linear gradient or a radial gradient (you can try them out and see how they look like). The Gradient tool will apply whichever type of gradient is selected in your Gradient palette.
4. You can reverse a gradient by clicking on the item which has the gradient and then click on the Reverse in the Gradient palette.
5. In the Gradient palette, there is something called Location. That is the middle point between the two colours of a gradient, that is where you have 50% of one colour and 50% of the other colour. If you have a gradient with 3 colours, then you have two middle points, which in the Gradient palette are represented by a rhombus icon on top of the gradient slider. Let me explain this better: if you have a gradient that goes from yellow to green to red, you will have a middle point between yellow and green and another one between the green and the red. You can change the location of those points either by entering a value in the Location area of the palette or by simply dragging the location sliders along the gradient slider. You cannot adjust any of these settings with the Gradient tool.
6. The Gradient Tool and the Gradient palette work in differently when applying gradients to multiple objects See the two images below. The first one shows you a gradient applied to 3 rectangles with the Gradient tool. All three rectangles are selected and the gradient is applied to all of them at once.

Gradient created with the Gradient tool

The second image shows you a gradient applied to the same 3 rectangles with the Gradient palette this time. Here again all three rectangles are selected and the gradient is applied to all of them at once. You can see that each rectangle has its own gradient and each one of the gradients starts from the middle of each rectangle.

Gradient created with the Gradient palette

Now you say, “Oops! I have applied a gradient to multiple objects with the Gradient tool, but I didn’t want them to all have a common starting point for the gradient. Oh well, I will just select them all again and re-apply the gradient with the Gradient palette”. Go ahead, try it. “Hey! Nothing has changed!” you say. That’s right. You will now have to apply the gradient to each image individually in order to undo what you have done with the Gradient tool.

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