Free Adobe Photoshop Website Designing Video Tutorial - Gradient Tool and Paint Bucket Tool

In this Free Photoshop Web Designing Video Tutorial, we will show you how to use Gradient Tool and Paint Bucket Tool. These tools give color to your website. Both the tools are very helpful in Website Designing. You can create a very beautiful website background using Gradient Tool and Bucket Tool give solid color to your website because this is the only tool using which you can fill solid color to the different regions of your website. We suggest that you view our “Gradient Tool and Paint Bucket Tool Video Tutorial " to understand the use of these tools visually and more easily.

By default gradient tool is visible. Press ”G” to select Gradient Tool and “Shift + G” to switch between gradient tool and paint bucket tool.

Functions of Photoshop Gradient Tool and Paint Bucket Tool:

1. Gradient Tool: “ Gradient Tool” is used to fill nice blend of multiple colors to a selected area or a layer. There are five different types of gradient tool using which you can fill gradient to your selection in different style.
2. Paint Bucket Tool: “ Paint Bucket Tool” is used to fill solid colors or some pattern.

Steps for using Gradient Tool:

1. Select File > New.
2. Now, make a selection using any selection tool (like marquee tool, lasso tool) or pen tool from the toolbar. But if you want to fill your whole background with some gradient then there is no need of selecting any selection tool.
3. Select Gradient Tool from the toolbar or press G on the keyboard. When you select gradient tool various options will get appear on the “Tool Options Bar”. Set different options according to your requirement.
4. Select any gradient style (linear, radial, angle, reflected, diamond) from the tool options bar.
5. Click on the gradient bar given in the tool options bar for choosing different gradient colors. Gradient Editor dialog box will get appears.
6. In the gradient editor, click on the “New” tab for creating new gradient of colors. After clicking on the new tab a copy of a selected gradient will get appear in the “Presets” section. If you want to give some name to your gradient then fill some name in the name field but before clicking on the “New” tab. Choose any Gradient Type – Solid or Noise. Set Smoothness in percentage.
7. Click on the left color stop for defining the starting color and on the right color stop for defining last color of the gradient. Click anywhere in the middle of the gradient for adding more colors to the gradient. Number of color stops equals to the number of colors of the gradient.
8. Double-click on the color stop, or click the color swatch. Color palette will get appear. Now, select a color and press Ok.
9. Again press Ok (after making all your setting) of “Gradient Editor” dialog box.
10. Position the pointer in the image where you want to set the starting point of the gradient, and drag to define the ending point.

Steps for using Paint Bucket Tool:

1. Select File > New.
2. Now, make a selection using any selection tool (like marquee tool, lasso tool) or pen tool from the toolbar. But if you want to fill your background with some color then there is no need of selecting any selection tool.
3. Select “Paint Bucket tool” from the toolbar. Instead of selecting bucket tool from the toolbar, you can also select Edit > Fill to fill your selection or object.
4. You can change “Opacity”, “Mode” and “Tolerance” etc. from the Tool Options Bar.
5. Click on the foreground color in the toolbar. Select color from the “Color Picker” palette and press Ok.
6. Click the paint bucket tool on the area where you want to fill the color.
7. You can fill this area with some pattern also by selecting Fill > Pattern from the tool options bar. Select any pattern from the pattern palette and click the paint bucket tool on the area where you want to fill the pattern.

Note: The paint bucket tool cannot be used with images in Bitmap mode.



Gradient Tool options given in the Tool Options Bar:

When you select any of the focus tools (Blur, Sharpen, Smudge) related tool options appear in the Tool Options bar. These options are described below:

1. Gradient Styles : There are five different type of gradient styles.
   
   • Linear Gradient: By default linear gradient is selected. Using Linear Gradient you can fill your area with gradient in a straight line.
   • Radial Gradient: Using Radial Gradient you can fill your area in a circular shape or pattern.
   • Angle Gradient: Angle Gradient is used to create a circular sweep of blended colors.
   • Reflected Gradient: This works similar to the linear gradient, but it creates a mirror image as well.
   • Diamond Gradient: To fill your area from the starting point outward in a diamond pattern. End points define one corner of the diamond.
   
   
2. Mode: There are different options of mode (i.e. normal, replace, multiply, screen, darken, etc.). Mode controls how image pixels are affected.
3. Opacity: This will make the fill gradient color partially transparent. 0 will mean you can't see the gradient.
4. Reverse: Click on the reverse check box from the tool options bar to reverse the gradient.
5. Dither: It smoothes the gradient effect.
6. Transparency: This will make your gradient parts transparent.

Paint Bucket Tool options given in the Tool Options Bar:

1. Fill: Using this option you can specify whether to fill with the foreground color or with a pattern.
2. Pattern: If you choose pattern then only this option will get highlighted. You can select any pattern from the pattern pop up to fill your selection with.
3. Mode: There are various options of mode (i.e. normal, replace, multiply, screen, darken, etc.). Mode controls how image pixels are affected.
4. Opacity: This will make the fill color partially transparent.
5. Tolerance: This determines how closely to match color pixel that has to be filled. This ranges from 0 to 255.
6. Anti-aliased: By selecting this option, you can make the edges of the filled selection smooth.
7. Contiguous: To fill all the contiguous pixels to the one you click.
8. All Layers: To fill colors from all the visible layers otherwise this will fill color to the one clicked.