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Part 3: Working with Color Stops

First let's look at the color stops. Selecting a color stop activates the color controls under the ramp.

1. Selected Stop: Select stops by clicking on them. A selected stop has a dark colored point. Any manipulations you do to color or position will affect the selected stop only. Drag the stop to a new location to change the "speed" of the gradient (how fast it blends together) or use the Location box to manually type in a percentage. Try sliding  one of the color stops and see how it affects your gradient.

2. The small diamond between stops is called the midpoint. You can use this diamond to determine where the midpoint of the colors are and affect how they blend. If you wanted more orange tones in the above gradient you could slide the midpoint diamond to the right, for example. Try sliding it to adjust the midpoint. When the midpoint diamond is selected it is solid colored, rather than hollow.

3. Delete button: Clicking this deletes the selected stop from the gradient ramp. You can also drag the stop away from the ramp and drop it to delete it. Try both, and then use undo (cmd/ctrl + Z) to get it back.

4. Color picker: Either double click on the color chip to open the color picker, or click the arrow to open a popup where you can quickly choose the background and foreground colors, or User color. If you choose User color, you still will need to double click on the color chip to open the color picker. Try changing the color.

5. Location: You can set the location here manually, by percent, 0% to 100%, 0 being far left and 100 all the way to the right. This is most useful when you want to divide colors exactly.

Select the last color stop on the right. Drag it off the ramp or click Delete to get rid of it. You can also press the delete key on your keyboard, but if you use the delete key it will reappear on the other end of the ramp!

You should have something like this:

If you select either color stop, you'll have a midpoint diamond you can adjust between them. Slide the yellow stop to the right, and adjust the midpoint diamond to suit you.

Adding additional color stops

Not only can you remove color stops, you can also add them. This is as easy as clicking once under the ramp where you want the color stop to appear. Then use the color section to determine the color for the stop.

When you add color stops you will have additional midpoints automatically added as well.

Go to the next part to learn about the opacity stops.

Go to part 4 --->>>

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