Any way to create a gradient from an existing image?

[Jack Vogel]

Actually, never mind. I just found a webtool that will do what I want.

https://www.gradient-scanner.com/

Just drop in an image file and mark where you want the gradient scanned. After that you adjust the sensitivity and it spits out the stats. I still had to type them in by hand but it is VERY accurate. The location of each color is listed by 10th of a percent and PS will only accept integers so you’ll have to round them off.

Here is a sunset (or sunrise, I’m not sure) that I ran a test on. The left side is the original JPG and the right is the gradient I was able to create.

The only adjustment I would want to make would be to tighten up a few of the Color Midpoints. If I were willing to futz with it for a while I could get it closer but considering it only took me 4 minutes to create a 15 Color Stop gradient with this much accuracy I’d judge it a success.

If anyone can find a more automated method that would be nice (something that actually spits out a gradient file), but if you need better accuracy than eyeballing it with the eyedropper tool this is pretty good.

[Jon Iverson]

Thanks for sharing this, Jack. At one point several years back, I might have tried to use that tool to create a decent gradient from a rainbow. Not sure if it could do it that finely, but it may be possible. I wanted to add some Photoshop created rainbows to some photos I had, but I could never quite get the Photoshop gradients to match real rainbows, so I gave up on the project. Tutorials around the web make the process look easy and it is but only if you are satisfied with the “standing out like a sore thumb” Photoshop rainbows because they are so easy to pick out in photos.