gradation

As regulars to this weekly podcast know, Photoshop Top 40 is a reverse-order countdown of what I consider to be the best, most essential, can't-live-without-'em features in all of Photoshop. Some are sweet, some are sexy, some are sizzling cool. And then there's this one: the gradient tool.

I mean, every program offers a gradient tool, right? But Photoshop's is special. Not only can you paint a soft transition from black to white, or between any two or more colors for that matter. But you can also soften the transition from one image to another. The gradient tool fades, swipes, tapers, and more. It is, simply put, one of Photoshop's simplest and most powerful masking functions. Read more »