P: Gradient editor needs a few improvements

Oooh, I stumbled across this year-old thread by accident.

I'm nowhere near as technical-minded as you guys, but I'm so glad someone is. I never knew why I hated the gradient tool so much.

I almost never use the thing ever, except to try it knowing I'll be disappointed. I always create my gradients by using color-to-transparent gradients on separate layers so I can add colors, eliminate banding, and neutralize undesired tones before merging the result.

But I never could have articulated so helpfully WHY the default sucked - only that it never produced results that were usable.

Plotted this way, you can clearly see the "ugly hard bands" Bennett describes as corners in the plotted gradient path. The only way to get closer to Bennett's result in Photoshop would be to add more color stops, effectively just closer approximating but never quite hitting the smooth curve achieved by Bennett's gradient.

EDIT: Why closed for further discussion? David's posts are showing the existing gradient tools shortcomings in crystal clarity. Throughout this thread you've kept claiming either user ignorance or user miscommunication. Now that time has been taken here to show you EXACTLY what we're talking about, you're going to close the thread? You could at least acknowledge David's graphs with a "Oh, now I get it".

I have not been defensive - though the response above could be misread as condescending, I'm just relaying facts that someone seems to have missed.

I have been trying to explain misunderstandings, and get to the bottom of the customer request (which was far from clear in the original request). That has been achieved, and yet other people keep posting things that really are not helping the cause of this feature request.

Please read my posts more carefully.

actually, please provide me with a link so I can complain about you to your boss, since there does not seem to be a method for that to happen.

Chris, your tone is still defensive and (worse!) condescending. You've got a dozen people on this thread who all clearly understand the problem that you continue to argue doesn't exist. You do realize you're operating in a customer service capacity, right? You're not helping.

and by quit, i mean this forum and your job. Just so we're clear so that you cannot come back and gripe about how what I'm typing doesn't make sense, and how I'm uneducated and not an adobe tech.
Just because your coworkers can take a photo and use picassa doesn't mean their full time day job of an engineer qualifies them to be all knowing.

This forum is made up of actual professionals and newbs in the respective fields with real life issues to your closed boxed world of code.

Maybe take some advice from the people paying you to have that big fancy job

dear chris.
please quit and stop deleting comments that are no less rude than yours and plainly prove you have no clue what youre talking about.
Since we cannot delete your sh*t attitude comments, you shouldn't be able to delete our disdain at your behavour.
a$$hole

Many of our engineers (Dev and QE) are photographers, painters, and/or designers. In practice, we have far more experience, and are very visually oriented.

We are listening or we wouldn't be having the conversation and trying to understand what you are asking for (when the original requests are lacking).

Bennett dude. You are on the money here. I have noticed this limitation too with gradients(not to mention it takes 3 UI windows to edit a gradient.) This forum is super frustrating and is pretty much filled with defensive engineers trying to tell us that things work, when they clearly do not have the experience using the tools in practice. They also are not visual. They really aren't interested in listening and understanding what we are asking for.

This is a legitimate issue and a huge problem in Photoshop's gradient editor. As a developer who started his career in graphic design, I'm floored at the horrible response. It was clear from the first question what Bennett Foddy was requesting and the clueless, defensive way Chris Cox dances around the issue is appalling. Thank god there are competitors starting to make inroads into the graphic software space. This nonsense should lose Photoshop customers.