Help with gradient tool coverage

[maggie2]

Hi,
I am trying to use the gradient tool inside various parts of my drawing. I am clicking on the area I want to use the gradient in and it comes out just great. However, I end up with a white border around the edges of the gradient. I am attaching an image that shows what I mean. I tried doing the gradient twice and that didn't help. I also tried selecting the black outline and filling it with black but that didn't work either. Is there some way to get the gradient to fill the selected area and not have the white outline? I sure would appreciate any and all help with this. I finally found a way to get a gradual change of color into my work and if I can find out how to get rid of the white border I will be good to go. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Marg

 

[Rich54]

I think the problem comes from the fact that your black lines are not very crisp and sharp. If you look at this magnification you can see all the fuzziness and gray areas. I believe this is what's affecting your ability to make a clean selection for your gradient. You need to clean up these lines before applying the gradient. There are several possible approaches to do that and I've outlined one below.

• Make a selection of all the black outlines (the Magic Wand tool would work) and copy them to a new layer.
• On that new layer, re-select all the black outlines. Then go to Select>Modify>Smooth. You can experiment with how many pixels to enter for the smoothing, but try starting with two pixels.
• With your smoothed selection still active, go to Edit>Fill>Black. Now invert the selection and press Delete. This should result in much cleaner black lines with little or no grayish values to mess up your selection.
• Now create a new layer immediately below your black lines and fill it with white. Merge the two layer (the black lines and the white) to give you a brand new blank template for you to apply colored gradients.

Here's what I get (at 200% magnification) after following these steps:

 

[maggie2]

Thank you so much. I will try that immediately.

 

[maggie2]

I just wanted to tell you that I have tired this and it worked really well. Again, thank you so much for your great advice!