How To Use Color From Gradient in Gimp 2.8

A Gimp user asked this question:

Saw your offer to help if I have a question about GIMP 2.8 and am thankful for it.
I don’t get the check-box to use color from gradient with any of my paint-tools like I did in Gimp 2.6. I’ve attached a screen-shot of the options when the air-brush is selected. I hope you will be able to help me or guide me to a solution.

Here’s the deal,

Gimp 2.8′s new brush dynamics interface replaced the need for this checkbox. Gimp 2.8′s brush dynamics are essentially a set of many, many really cool options that allow you to customize how your brushes act when you are using them. Some of these dynamics can change the size of the brush based on how fast you are stroking, while others will work in conjunction with a wacom tablet to change the color, or transparency based on how hard you push on the tablet. There is a lot of additional power here, but with that power comes a bit of a learning curve compared to the much simpler (but much less powerful) Gimp 2.6 brush dynamics.

Ok great, how do I use it?

The first thing that you will need to do is open the appropriate dockable dialogs that use this new functionality. In the windows>;>;>;dockable dialogs menu, you will find a Paint Dynamics Editor option. Click on this to open the dialog up, and then drag it into one of your docks for later use. now click on the Paint Dynamics dialog that you just added to activate it. This will show you a list of all of your existing brush dynamics that come with Gimp.

From here, you can create a new brush dynamic, which will give you the ability to brush from a gradient. To create a new dynamic, simply right-click on any dynamic and click “new dynamics.” Once you do this, a new dockable dialog will pop up called the “Paint Dynamics Editor.” This is where we will tell Gimp 2.8 to brush from a gradient.

Tip: There is a lot of power here. Try playing around with different combinations of these checkboxes and see what you can come up with. Really spice it up by modifying the curve by selecting a dynamic from the “mapping matrix” drop-down menu located at the top of this dockable dialog window.

There are a lot of options here, but the only one that we’re worried about is the color|fade checkbox. This will create the “use color from gradient” option that we once had in Gimp 2.6.

Now that you have this checked, your brush will work just like it did in Gimp 2.6. Simply choose how you want the gradient to be repeated in your tools options dialog, and choose which gradient you want to use.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions about this post feel free to leave a comment in the comment section below.

A Gimp user asked this question: Saw your offer to help if I have a question about GIMP 2.8 and am thankful for it. I don’t get the check-box to...