P: Gradient editor needs a few improvements

BTW I did a quick test with the latest (2015) versions of illustrator and photoshop to double check. I think the reason Illustrator's one seems less bad is that it's doing simple linear interpolation, which is cruder but more predictable - but you'll see that both of them are pretty bad when it comes to smoothness.



Honestly I could live with it if Photoshop just did the illustrator thing, with a simple linear line in RGB space. My issue is that Photoshop's 'cubic' interpolation just clearly doesn't work as specified. Cubic splines do not have sharp corners in them, sorry!

I have given up on Photoshop. I am using Acorn, which doesn't provide as many customization options, but usually delivers exactly what I want without effort. The two types of gradients it provides, regular and smooth:

Forget it Herbert, it's never going to happen. And to be fair, the current code was written 15 years ago so there's probably nobody at Adobe who remembers how it works.

No suggestions, Mr. Cox? Will this issue be considered for improvement in an upcoming update?

Only Photoshop's gradient algorithms seem to be problematic in terms of quality. Other applications generate much better quality. Perhaps it is time to modernize that code a bit?

I just checked the same gradient in Illustrator: no issues there, nor when I place the illustrator version in Photoshop.

Great! Then why the quality issues with colour stop interpolation? Could this not be improved?
Please see this thread for a comparison with Photoline:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2017683

Photoshop is already using a cubic interpolation for gradients, and has been since Photoshop 5.0.

I am aware this is an old thread, but today I witnessed the splendour of cubic interpolation between gradient stops in Photoline.

Gradients in Photoshop just do not compare - a far cry from what is possible in terms of quality and ease-of-use when a cubic interpolation option is available.

Yep. Bennett is in the right, the devs are in the wrong. In no way are the default Photoshop gradient tool results good enough (not after seeing how much better the alternatives can be, at least), and in no way is all that fiddling and tweaking intuitive or acceptable, not for a +thousand-dollar piece of software (be it on the older CS suite, or the new CC subscription). And I've been working in the field (with Adobe CS, no less) for more than 10 years, so that's just my not-so-humble opinion.

One word: Affinity, by Serif. I believe you are all barking to the wrong tree, unfortunately... Their software already features superb gradient quality, and they would probably be willing to implement such an outstanding feature, STAT, instead of snubbing their most technically-minded users.

FWIW, I still use CS6 at my day job but have already resorted to Affinity Designer for my background gradient needs (I export them with the desired resolution directly as TIFFs and paste them into Photoshop as needed; not a very elegant workflow, but the end result is *that much better*).

Just my €0,02...