Creating multi-gradient ramps in After Effects?

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Shape Layers will provide for ore options. There’s always the Paint Tool for more organic yet controllable matte creation. You may also use multiple Ramp over different layers and use the Darken/Lighten Blending Mode.

HTH
RoRK

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[Thorsten Miess]

Also, applying “Ramp” and then “Colorama” will give you a multi-color gradient as well

[David Bogie]

In the olden days, we’d do this with Photoshop and then lots of blur.
In the truly ancient days, we’d simply shoot interesting things with a camera and run the focus out.

As Thorsten noted, any grayscale image can be turned into beautiful mutlicolr gradients with Colorama, an underappreciated filter.

bogiesan

[Sean Worsell]

Cool, very good advice. I tried the two ramps and one just completely obscures the other–and then you mention blending modes. Of course! That should work. And I have never used shapes before. I’ll try that too. The ancient days when you had to shoot something to become your matte must have been more fun actually. The extra work required to create the art must have provided some satisfaction. I do love the power of After Effects, nevertheless. But it’s a GIANT program, and sometimes easy tasks such as creating complex gradients/ramps baffle me. I think you guys have solved my questions though. Thank you.

[Justin Vaillancourt]

If your using CS3 or up you can use Layer Styles (same as Photoshop) to create a very complex gradient, right click on the layer and click Layer Styles. I find it’s easier to precomp any layer you add a layer style to because they behave very weird with other effects.