From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

Creating and applying gradient swatches - InDesign Tutorial

From the course: InDesign 2024 Essential Training

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Creating and applying gradient swatches

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- [Instructor] Everyone loves using color gradients, but to be honest, InDesign is kind of clunky when it comes to making and applying them. Let's start by opening the Gradient panel. It's over here in the Dock. Or you can find it in the Window menu inside the Color sub-menu. Now, I have a frame on the last spread of this document and we can jump there by clicking the last spread button down here in the lower left corner of the document window. Now, I'll click this empty frame. The easiest way to put a gradient in this frame is to just click the little gradient icon here in the panel. Now, you can see we have the default white to black gradient applied to this object, which is fine, but kind of boring. Let's spice it up a bit. You can choose whether you want this to be a linear gradient or a radial gradient right here in this pop-up menu. That's cool, kind of a lips inside the frame. But in this case, let's set this back to linear gradient 'cause it's easier to work with. Next, you need to pay attention to this gradient ramp down here at the bottom of the panel. In fact, I'm going to drag this panel out just so it's easier to work with. Now, these little doodads underneath the ramp are called gradient stops. Those control the colors. For example, you can click the black stop on the right and then change its color in several ways. If you have the Color panel open, you can just pick a color from there. Or if you know you want a color that's already in your Swatches panel, you can open the panel, find the color, and then hold down the Option key on the Mac or Alt key on Windows, and then click that Swatch. There we go, now it's white to green. You can also add more gradient stops simply by clicking anywhere along the bottom of the ramp down here. As soon as you click, it adds a new stop. So we could add yellow, for example. Now, it goes white, to yellow, to green, and you can move these gradient stops around to change the effect. Also, it's a little hard to see, but there are little diamonds on the top of the ramp. And when you drag one of these diamonds, you change what the halfway point is between the two. It's almost like pulling the middle of a rubber band back and forth. If you drag this one to the right, you get more yellow. If you drag it to the left, you get more green. Now, in this case, I actually only want white to green, so let's get rid of this yellow stop simply by clicking and dragging it off the ramp. So this is great, but I'd rather the blend go from the bottom to the top. You can do that by adjusting the angle field here in the panel. For example, I'll type in 90. That's good, but actually I wanted the dark part to be on the bottom, so I could type minus 90 degrees. Or instead, let's just click the Reverse button here. That swaps the gradient stops around. That looks better. All right, that's the basics of making a gradient. A couple things you should know. First, there's no way to set the gradient's opacity. InDesign does not let you choose transparency inside of a gradient, so it cannot go from white to transparent, for example. If you need that kind of effect, you have to use one of the transparency effects, such as feathering. Second, once you make one of these gradients, you're probably going to want to use it again somewhere else. So the good news is you can save gradients as swatches. To do that, make sure the object that has the gradient is selected. Then, open the Swatches panel menu and choose New Gradient Swatch. You can see that the gradient is reflected here, same stops and colors, but one thing is missing. You cannot save an angle in a gradient swatch. I don't know why. It's really frustrating. It always goes left to right. Now, it's always good to name your swatch as something reasonable, so I'll call this green to white. Then, you can click OK to save it. InDesign has one other gradient feature you need to know about. It's the Gradient Swatch tool over here in the Tool panel. This lets you fine-tune the way you want your gradient to look. Here's how it works. After you select an object like this frame, you can click where you want the beginning point to be, and then drag to where you want the ending point to be. So there we go. There's a diagonal gradient. Let's try again. Click and drag. Cool. Blends or gradients are certainly the trickiest InDesign color feature to get right, but if you practice fine-tuning them and using that Gradient Swatch tool and the Gradient panel, you'll soon become a blend master.

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