Applying gradients

- The concept of gradients are common in the design world and FileMaker has some gradient tools that can help you add a professional style to your layouts by blending different colors together smoothly. Now, FileMaker allows you to apply gradients to objects that you select, but you have to do that in Layout Mode, so we'll go into Layout Mode first. You can pick any object and apply gradients to it, but I'm just gonna focus on one of the layout parts here. So, let's say, in this header, we wanna experiment at least with applying gradients. So, you'll notice over here, in our Inspector, this is where I can change the color of the header if I want to, I can click on the color wheel, pick different colors.

You also see that I have the ability to add an image in the background, which we had covered in a previous movie, but the last option here is the gradient. Now, this should be used with caution, but the idea behind the gradient is you can get kinda that cool, sort of blended feel if you know how to do it correctly. I'm not particularly good at it, but just wanna give you the idea of what some of the tools are that are going to be available to you. Now, here's the thing... First of all, a gradient consists of two different colors. So, you're actually blending two different colors together. So, what I'd like to do here is first pick the first color and I'm gonna keep it within the color family options.

So, let's say I pick this really light color there on one side, and then over here, I'm gonna pick something, let's say, even lighter. So, now... Maybe I'll darken it up a little bit. Especially if I stay within the color family, you notice that I get kind of a cool, almost metallic kind of blended effect. Now, I can affect this a little bit by moving where the colors actually happen. So, you'll notice that I'm doing this horizontally at the moment, but I can also affect the angle at which the gradient appears or doesn't appear. Notice that the blend is moving around from top to bottom, to left to right a little bit.

So, let's say I wanna kinda blend it like this, I can manually do it as well. So, you get kind of a look there. I can also go from a center to a top to bottom. If you like the idea of a gradient, you can use these tools to add a neat effect to your layouts. I would say you don't wanna overdo it too much, but here might be a neat way to blend this part with the other part here, and still give your logo a clean background. So, this might be a neat way to add a blended look to the layouts in your solution, and you do so under the Inspector and the gradient tool.

Now, you can apply gradients to anything. You can apply gradients to a layout, to the fill in the background of a field label, or to the shape objects that we had added, whatever it is that you wanna apply them to, anytime you can see the Graphics tab and see the gradient option, you can use the gradient tool.