Adjusting the Position of Gradients
VB wrote:
Is there a way to change the origin point of a radial gradient? InDesign always makes it originate from the center of the object, but I’d like to be able to have it originate from, say, a third of the way down from the top of an object. The “location” option in the gradient panel is grayed out when you have radial gradient selected.
It took me months to figure out InDesign’s gradient features when I started using this program. There are all kinds of weird workarounds and things to keep in mind. For example, it seems like you should be able to control this kind of thing in the Gradient panel, but you really can’t. Instead, you need to use the Gradient tool.
The Gradient tool is all about applying manual “blend” formatting on top of the gradient, such as where a gradient should start and stop. For example, here’s a radial blend and the Gradient panel:
As you noted, the Gradient panel’s Location field is grayed out. But when you drag over the object with the Gradient tool, you can move the “start” and “end” point of the vignette:
The Gradient tool is helpful in many other situations, including controling how a blend fills (or strokes) selected text. For example, when you fill text with a blend from the Swatches panel, it’s always based on the bounding box of the text frame. You can override that by selecting the text and running the Gradient tool over it. Here’s the original text (with a radial blend swatch on it) and then after the gradient tool was used:
I wish you could save this kind of location information in an object style, but you can’t. Ah, Adobe always has to leave something for a future version.
 |
Yes, it’s an infuriating feature! The non-savability as an Object Style is a PITA indeed. On a number of occasions I’ve resorted to making a gradient in PS and used it as a bitmapped fill, that gives more predictable control — but it’s of course also rather inflexible regarding colors, etc. And native ID gradients are also 8-bit/channel, which often cause some banding — for ID can’t, unlike PS, apply faint noise to the gradient, which kills banding. Infuriating!
So far Fireworks has the best gradient tools available, except I can never ever get the gradient ‘line’ rotated and keep it’s 100% straight.
From what I can remember CorelDraw had great gradient tools also, along with some handy transparency tools using lines with sliders. I wish Adobe took some ideas from that and make our lives easier in all Creative Suite apps.
Roland, I’d say Xara Xtreme (www.xara.xom) has even greater gradient/transparency tools, and the direction “line” can be made straight by a simple Shift-constrain. As someone wise has said: “I wish Adobe took some ideas from that and make our lives easier in all Creative Suite apps.” :-)
lol … Well, Xara was once a Corel product, so perhaps their tools are related.
It’s time to google and see if there aren’t any plug-ins that add such handle-based gradient tools in ID and Ill.
You can save gradient information in a paragaph style (although you have to do it by updating the definition of the style with selected text that has a gradient). Then, that paragraph style can be called for by an object style.
Of course, this only works for text frames.
I’ve not experimented to see what happens if you have two different paragraph styles in the same text frame with different gradient definitions. My impression is that it doesn’t work very well, but that might be a holdover from the realization that gradients and paragraph styles don’t work well — you need the gradient to start over for each line of text (when it’s a vertical gradient — or perhaps I should say a non-horizontal gradient) and that doesn’t happen.
Dave
I have what is probably a stupid question/situation in InDesign CS3/Mac 10.4.11. For some reason I cannot adjust the gradient tab and the paragraph tab width. They are at least twice the width they should normally be when I click on them from the tab bar. I think they became stretched too wide when I pulled them off of the tab bar to do some work with them in a floating state. They are twice as wide as the rest of the tabs now when they expand from the tab bar now and I want it to be the same as the other tabs — this anomaly has just happened in the past few days and it bugs me that all the other tabs have a place on the bottom right corner to adjust their size except the gradient and paragraph tabs (which I use every day).
Thanks so much for this help. Another way to put one function in three spots for Adobe. But you did save my much time and I appreciate that. RL
I have a problem with angle using gradient manually. When we set angle at at particular degree e.g. -90deg and while update gradient location color fill tab the angle automatically converted at 0deg rather than retain our previous setting at -90deg. How can we handle this degree setting problem in gradient feature.
Thanks.
The problem refer above for gradient are related to using gradient on Table Fill and Stroke feature.
Thanks.
I just learned that in InDesign CS-6 you can save a gradient that is applied to text into a Paragraph Style. You do it by making the gradient with the Gradient Swatch Tool, this makes an override to the Paragraph Style which you can then redefine to include the Gradient and apply elsewhere in the document.
If you look at the Paragraph Style Settings under General it includes the gradient angle and gradient length there.
I’m using InDesign 5.5 and your advice has help me. I wanted to change the direction of the gradient–with your info. I used the gradient tool and positioned it over the gradient and a cross hair appeared and allowed me to draw a line indicating the direction I wanted. It worked! (I learned desktop publishing in PageMaker, so I’m very, very rusty and have to learn much over again.)
Glad to be of help :)