From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

776 Freeform gradients in Illustrator CC 2019

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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776 Freeform gradients in Illustrator CC 2019

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- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. Now since the dawn of time, relatively, Illustrator has offered us two types of automated gradient, linear and radial. Now, inside Illustrator CC 2019, we have a third called freeform, that allows you to position points of color anywhere you like inside of an object, and it's going to allow us to take this piece of artwork right here, notice the linear gradients in the background as well as the pepper, and its stem over here on the left, and we're going to turn it into this without resorting to gradient mesh. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. Alright, here's the final version of the artwork, just so you have a chance to see it on screen. This shape right here is an example of full-on gradient mesh, created in part using the mesh tool. Whereas this guy is an example of a freeform gradient. And as you can see here, this left hand pepper isn't quite as lustrous as the right hand one, but it's a heck of a lot easier to create. And I just love the fact that you can actually see that fill expressed here at the bottom of the tool box. Alright, so we're going to start things off with this background rectangle, which is currently filled with a standard linear gradient. And notice, once again, assuming that you're working in Illustrator CC 2019, or, I presume, later, you have an edit gradient button up here in the control panel. It also appears in the properties and gradients panels. And if I click on it, Photoshop goes ahead and automatically switches me over to the gradient tool, and by default displays the gradient annotator, complete with each one of the color stops. And so I'm starting things off up here at the top with pale yellow, then we have a pale cyan, the kind of bluish gray, and finally white way down here at the bottom now what I think everybody's just going to find absolutely terrific is that you can now switch gradient types from the control panel. So you no longer have to bring up the gradient panel, and in addition to linear and radial, right here, we now for the first time have a third option of freeform gradient. Now notice when you switch between linear gradient and radial gradient, Illustrator goes ahead and keeps the colors. When you switch to freeform gradient, at least the way things are now, Illustrator automatically switches out the colors to black and white, as well as other colors found inside the artwork. That is not even remotely what I want. I want to gain back my original colors, and so I'm going to be moving these colors around. Notice that you can just drag them to different locations. And so I'm just going to drag these guys into kind of vertical formation like so. And then I'll change this top guy by double clicking on it, and selecting this pale yellow color swatch that I've created in advance. Then I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, to hide that panel so I can see the next color stop, this guy right here. I'll double click on it and switch it to pale cyan. And once again, I'm covering up the next color stop so I'll press the enter key in order to dismiss the panel, and I'll double click on this guy, fairly tedious, but has to be done. Switch it to blue gray right there, and then I'll go ahead and double click on this final color stop, and I will change it to white. Now notice that even though these points are kind of in alignment with each other, we do not have a linear gradient. And so if that's where I want to start, which I do, then I really need to line up these points. And I'm going to do that with the help of this guides layer right here, which has this vertical center guide as well as this horizontal guide that scooted a little bit downward. And now I'm going to drag each one of these points so it aligns with the vertical guideline right there. This guy already almost does, this guy just needs to be scooted over to the intersection of those two guides. And then I'll drag this point over as well. And you can see that we have something approximating a linear gradient, but more strictly speaking, we're seeing glows of color around each one of these points. And by the way, I'm assuming that you have points selected up here in the control panel. Alright, now I want to convey the sense that these peppers are sitting on a very low focus table. And so I'm going to drag this white color stop up to right about here, let's say, and I'm going to drag this cyan stop upward as well. Alright, now I want to create a bunch of additional color points, and so if you want to create a bunch of points with the same color, then first select the point that represents the color you want to duplicate, and then just go ahead and click in a new location, such as over here, and here might work out as well, and then I'll click close to the top left corner of the artwork, and I'll click right about here. And we need a bunch of color stops to make this work. And I'll show you why. I'll go ahead and select this shade of cyan right here. And I'll click over here. Notice however that this region is not very cyan-y. The pale yellow is drifting down into it, and so to compete with that, I'll add another point at that location, then I'll just go ahead and add a couple of points over here on the left hand side of the artwork as well. And so it takes a little bit of experimentation to get a sense for how this tool works. Alright, now I'll fill out the white table top by selecting the white point, just so that I'm creating more white points, and I'll click to set a point right about there, let's say, another one at this location, and then one in between. And so notice the white tabletop is going to be slanting down and to the right. We want to do something more or less symmetrical over here on the left hand side of the artwork, and so I'll go ahead and set a point there, there, and there. So it really is easy to lay down these points. It's another matter predicting what the effects are going to be. Alright so now we need more of this bluish gray, so I'll select that guy and I'll set another point there, and set one over on this side. Notice that is not enough, I need to more or less match what I'm doing with the white tabletop. So I'll set a point here, I'll set a point down at this location, and I'll go ahead and move this guy down as well, and then I'll set a point here, I'll set a point right above the white one, like so, and I'll drag this guy down. And so you can click to set points, you can drag them around if you like. If you've set a point that later you decide you don't want, all you have to do is select it and press the backspace key, or the delete key on the Mac. You also have the option of expanding the size of a point. So notice if I hover over this guy right here, I can see this dash circle, which represents the impact of that color. And so if I want the color to be a bigger part of the gradient, I just need to drag this circular widget downward. And I'm going to do the same thing for this guy, by the way. You don't actually have to select the point to pull this off, you can just hover over it and then drag this item down like so. And then, let's say I want to move this entire row of points right here, then I can click on one and shift click on the others. So you can select multiple points in a freeform gradient. And then I can just drag them upward like so. Alright now I want you to notice, if I were to turn off that peppers layer, here inside the layers panel, that I have these colorful lumps in the background. If that bothers you, you can just fill things in by selecting this guy for example, and then creating a new stop at this location, and another one here. But in our case, it's not really a big deal because after all, we do have these peppers in the way. Alright, now finally, if you want to get a better sense for how your gradient looks, then for one thing, I can turn off that guides layer in order to hide those horizontal and vertical guide lines, and then you can temporarily hide all of the points by either pressing and holding the control key, or the command key on the Mac, which temporarily gets you the black arrow tool. Or if you prefer, you can press and hold the space bar which temporarily gets you the hand tool. In my case, however, I'm going to press and hold control, or command on the mac, and then click off of the rectangle to deselect it. And that is how you create a freeform gradient just by dragging around a bunch of colorful points, here inside Illustrator CC 2019. Alright, now didn't that movie just make you glad to be alive? Well next week is even better. That's when I show you how to take your points of color and connect them to form lines. Which is going to allow us to take the pepper and its stem over here on the left hand side, and turn it into this. Deke's Techniques each and every week. Keep watching.

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