Linear gradient in Photoshop CS3?

"Usenet User" wrote in message

Problem: create a 256-px-wide grayscale picture, filled with a linear gradient from 0 to 255

Settings for the gradient tool:

Foreground to background
Linear gradient
Mode: normal
Opacity: 100%
Reverse: no
Dither: no
Transparency: no

To my surprise, the resulting gradient is not linear. It seems like it is a bit squished toward the center, i.e., the edge color are a bit stretched.

Any ideas?

Click on the gradient in the gradient tool settings at the top of the screen, and set the Smoothness slider to zero.

Gradient smoothness has been with us since at least Photoshop 5.5. Even today, many discussions of this feature assume that the term smoothness means an even distribution of gradient values. The term actually means the opposite: the use of a spline function to weight the ends of the gradient so that color transitions within the gradient are smoother. At the time this feature was introduced, this was considered to be so superior to a linear gradient that there was no way to disable it! Photoshop 6.0 provided a way to control smoothness in the gradient editor.
---
Mike Russell - www.curvemeister.com

Problem: create a 256-px-wide grayscale picture, filled with a linear gradient from 0 to 255

Settings for the gradient tool:

Foreground to background
Linear gradient
Mode: normal
Opacity: 100%
Reverse: no
Dither: no
Transparency: no

To my surprise, the resulting gradient is not linear. It seems like it is a bit squished toward the center, i.e., the edge color are a bit stretched.

Any ideas?

On Feb 28, 2:29 pm, Usenet User wrote:

Problem: create a 256-px-wide grayscale picture, filled with a linear gradient from 0 to 255

Settings for the gradient tool:

Foreground to background
Linear gradient
Mode: normal
Opacity: 100%
Reverse: no
Dither: no
Transparency: no

To my surprise, the resulting gradient is not linear. It seems like it is a bit squished toward the center, i.e., the edge color are a bit stretched.

Any ideas?

I do not know why you would not get a linear gradient with those settings. I do not have CS3 for testing but I tried it with CS2 and it worked fine.
Unless the blend modes have changed from cs2 to cs3 then you can verify the linearity by duplicating the gradient and rotating it 90 degrees and placing it in linear light blend mode at 50% opacity then add a threshold adjustment layer set to 128 - the line will be strait from corner to corner, if it is linear.

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:05:04 +0800, "Mike Russell" wrote:

"Usenet User" wrote in message

Problem: create a 256-px-wide grayscale picture, filled with a linear gradient from 0 to 255

Settings for the gradient tool:

Foreground to background
Linear gradient
Mode: normal
Opacity: 100%
Reverse: no
Dither: no
Transparency: no

To my surprise, the resulting gradient is not linear. It seems like it is a bit squished toward the center, i.e., the edge color are a bit stretched.

Any ideas?

Click on the gradient in the gradient tool settings at the top of the screen, and set the Smoothness slider to zero.

Gradient smoothness has been with us since at least Photoshop 5.5. Even today, many discussions of this feature assume that the term smoothness means an even distribution of gradient values. The term actually means the opposite: the use of a spline function to weight the ends of the gradient so that color transitions within the gradient are smoother. At the time this feature was introduced, this was considered to be so superior to a linear gradient that there was no way to disable it! Photoshop 6.0 provided a way to control smoothness in the gradient editor.
---
Mike Russell - www.curvemeister.com

That was it, thank you!