How to Make a Gradient in Illustrator

Hi, everyone, and welcome to an introductory video on how to make gradients in Illustrator. In this lesson, we'll learn step by step the basics of how to create a basic gradient and how to use them. So let's get started by creating a new document by clicking on the Create New button on the side here. From here, we can just choose one of the default sizes that we want to work in. So let's just click on one of these, and then click on the Create button. This will give us a blank canvas to work on and experiment creating our gradients. Now to get started creating a gradient, you must first have access to the gradient panel, which is located on the side of the screen here, over to the right. You can also access this by going to Window, and then let's go and find Gradients in the list here. By default, the gradient will display a black and white gradient, as shown by the gradient bar here and the small box here. In order to use this gradient, we need an object to apply it on. So let's go ahead and go to the Shapes tool here. So I'm just going to click on this rectangle tool. I'm just going to create a simple square for now, just within our document, like so. Now let's make sure that it's a basic color. So I'm just going to make this into a simple black square. And I'm going to remove the stroke here as well. Excellent. Now that we have an object, we can go ahead and create the gradient. So make sure that the gradient is selected. So I'm going to use my Selection tool here, select my object. And now with that selected, all you have to do to apply the gradient is click on the square here or our gradient bar. Excellent. And you can see now how it has automatically applied the gradient onto the object. Now that we know how to apply the default gradient to an object, let's take a look at what other options that are available to us in order to change the look of our gradient. So first of all, let's define the colors. In order to do this, we have to go back into our gradient panel here. And then from here, let's take a closer look at the gradient bar. So you can see here it's got these small circles on the far left and the far right of the bar. Now sometimes these can also be displayed as squares. These are called color stops, which is a point on the gradient where the color is defined and changes from one color to the next. Clicking on a color stop at the bottom of the bar here will select it. Double clicking it will allow us to change the color of the stop. Now you see here we have three options available to us when choosing a color. The first is the most versatile, as you can use the RGB spectrum here in order to select any color that we want. Now right now we've only got the black and white colors available to us. The second is the swatches. Now here we have Illustrator's default colors, which we can choose from if we're in a hurry or if we know exactly what color we need. And now the third option is the color picker, which we can use to pick out any color within our document, such as the gray color here in the background. So let's go ahead and choose a color for our color stops. I'm just going to select the gradient, the color stop here. And I'm just going to choose a orange for our first color stop. And for our second color stop, I'll just choose a nice yellow here, like so. Once the colors have been defined, you can choose to adjust the location of the starting point or the end point. And this will change the look and smoothness of the gradient. Now to do this, just click and drag the color stop left or right until you are happy with the results, like so. Now to edit the look of the gradient further, you can also adjust the location of the midpoint here, which is represented by this small little diamond icon in the middle. Now this is where the gradient displays an even mix of both the starting and ending colors. So to do this, all we have to do is click on this diamond icon here, and then just simply drag the diamond icon to the left or to the right, like so. Cool, now just bringing the color stops back to the far left and the right. And you can also add extra colors to your gradient. Now to do this, just simply click below the gradient bar. So if you take a close look at the mouse cursor here, you'll see once I move slightly below the gradient bar, it turns into an arrow with a plus. This means that we can create another color stop by clicking on it, like so. Now that we've created some new color stops, all we need to do is create new colors for it. The same way as we did previously by using the mouse and then double clicking on it, and then just simply choosing some colors. So let's go ahead and choose some more colors for our color stop, like so. Now you'll see that we've got this nice colorful gradient that has been automatically applied to our object here, awesome. Now if you wanted to delete a color stop, so let's say I've created this color stop in the middle here that I want to delete, it's represented by this black color here. All we need to do is simply select it. Now you'll see that the color stop is selected. You'll know it's been selected by this sort of blue outline around it, like so. And once it's been selected, just simply click on the Delete Stop button here, which is this trash can icon. Or just click and drag the color stop downwards until it disappears, like so. Awesome, now to adjust the gradient even further, we can also adjust the angle of this gradient by choosing a value in this angle box here. So we can highlight this and choose a value here, like so. So we can enter 90 degrees, and you'll see how it has automatically applied this onto our square. We can also use the drop down box here and choose a value from one of these options here, like so, excellent. Next, let's take a look at adjusting the opacity of a color stop. So to do this, we need to select one of these color stops, so let's select this orange here. And from here, we can move over to the opacity box here. And let's go ahead and click on the drop down menu here, and we can choose from any one of these values here. So let's take a couple of these colors here and change the opacity all the way down to 0%, like so. And you'll see the opacity of a color is represented by this checkered pattern on the bar here, when the value is below 100%. You'll see that it's also been applied to our object, like so. Let's go ahead and bring the opacity back up to 100%. And finally, the last adjustment that we can make to our gradient is changing the gradient type at the top here. And you can choose the gradient types here, and so let's see what this does. So we can change it to a radial gradient, like so. Or you can also change it to a free-form gradient, like so. Where we can choose these points here, and you'll see how the colors react within our shape, like so. And also, you can choose these stops to change the type of color, or what color you want inside the gradient. Awesome, now to save the new gradient, so let's go back to our original one here, which is the linear gradient. Now to save this, all you have to do is we have to open up the swatches panel here, which is at the top, or you can go to Window, and then find Swatches down here. And with the gradient still selected, just click on the New Swatch button here. So let's make sure that the gradient has been selected. So let's go back to the gradient here, select the gradient in the box here, like so. So let's make sure that it's been selected. So just using the Selection tool, select the gradient, or select your object. Go to the Swatches panel here, and now let's click on the New Swatch icon here. Now, this will create a new pop-up window where you can name your swatch. So let's name this Rainbow, like so, click OK. And automatically, this will create a new swatch with your gradient inside it, awesome. Now, in order to save your swatch library, all we have to do is click on this button here. So click on here, and we can save the swatch library as AI. So click on this, and we can name the library. So let's name this Rainbow, and then click on Save. So this will save your current swatches library in the default location for Illustrator, however, you can also specify a new location if you wish. Now, let's go ahead and delete this swatch. So select it, and then click on the trash can icon, and then let's click on Yes. And now, in order to load the saved library with the gradient swatch inside it, all we have to do is click on the menu box here, go to Open Swatch Library, navigate to User Defined, and click on the name that you named your library, which in this case, it's Rainbow. And then straight away, you'll see that our swatch library has been loaded with the Rainbow swatch inside here as well, our Rainbow gradient. Excellent, and that's it for this tutorial. Have fun creating gradients in Illustrator, and I'll see you next time on Tuts+.