- Create a rectangular marquee along the guideline. Turn on
the guidelines temporarily by pressing Ctrl+; (�-;). Then drag
your newly constrained marquee so that the top aligns with
the guideline, as in Figure 5-35. Press Ctrl+; (�-;) when you’re
finished to turn off the guides.
Figure 5-35.Figure 5-36.Once you’ve drawn the marquee to this fixed specification, you’ll
probably want to return to the options bar and reset the style for the
marquee tool to Normal so your marquee will behave normally.- Set the gradient tool options. Start by pressing the X key to
switch the foreground and background colors, so the foreground
color is white. Press the G key to get the gradient tool. In the
options bar, click the next to the gradient preview to see the
gradient presets, as shown in Figure 5-36. Then click the second
swatch in the top row, which goes from the foreground color to
transparent. To the right of the swatch in the options bar are
five gradient buttons; make sure the first one, , is selected. - Draw a gradient. So that you can see what you’re doing, press
Ctrl+H (�-H) to hide the selection (although it will still be in
effect). Click with the gradient tool above the first N in Einstein,
as indicated by the ➊ in Figure 5-37, Shift-drag to the left to
just past the large t in martini, as indicated by the ➋, and re-
lease. Although the selection is hidden, it is still active, so press
Ctrl+D (�-D) to abandon it.
Why the Shift-drag if the marquee is keeping the stroke horizontally in
place? Because you want the gradient angle to stay horizontal as well.152 Lesson 5: Working with Layers