How to Use Flash Gradients to Create Highlights and Shadows

You can use gradients in Flash to shade your fills with defined highlights and shadows, cutting corners to avoid having to paint in highlights and shadows. Using gradients also allows you to define just how much your highlights and shadows blend into the main color, and helps keep your edges clean and even.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A working installation of Flash.

1. First, select the fill that you want to shade. From the Color Picker, choose a Radial gradient of any color; we're going to tweak it, so which one doesn't matter. Radials are easier for clean highlights and shadows, though for strictly square objects you can also tweak a Linear gradient.

2. If selecting the gradient didn't already fill the shape, then use the Paint Bucket Tool to click on the shape to fill it.

3. Look at the Color Mixer panel and the gradient customization bar. Your default gradient will have two shades represented by little swatches that you can move around to change the gradient's ratio; you can also click anywhere under the color bar to add new swatches and new colors for a multi-hued gradient. Click underneath the bar until you have five swatches for five colors.

4. Drag the swatches to position them as follows: two to the far left, with one all the way on the end and another close by; one directly in the middle; two to the far right, with one all the way on the end and another close by.

5. Click the swatch on the middle and use the color picker to select your primary shade.

6. Now click the swatch on the farthest left, and set its color to white.

7. For the swatch closest to the white swatch, choose a color that's close to your primary color, but just a few shades lighter.

8. Now click the swatch to the farthest right and select your shadow color. For a stark shadow choose black, but I prefer to use a shade that's a variant of the primary color, just much darker.

9. For the swatch closest to the shadow swatch, choose a color that's close to your primary color, but just a few shades darker. What you've done is set up a gradient in which the solid color fill fades very subtly towards sharply-defined highlights and shadows.

10. If keeping your shape selected didn't automatically fill it with the new gradient, use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill in the gradient. Make sure that your highlight is your central point on the gradient; if it's not, you'll need to reverse the gradient order in the Color Mixer Panel.

11. Use the Fill Transform Tool to change the gradient's position, depending on your imaginary light source. If you want it to look like light is coming from the left, position it so that the central highlight is to the left while the shadows curve away towards the far right, or vice versa for light coming from the right.

[Beveronius]

on 2/15/2008 Again - these instructions are well written - thanks for the ideas