Gradient styles

There are actually five different gradient styles to choose from which are: Linear gradient, Radial gradient, Angle gradient, Reflected gradient, and Diamond gradient. The different gradient styles are shown in the diagram below accordingly:

Linear gradient
Starts from one point to another in a straight line.

Radial gradient
Starts from one point to another in a circular pattern. The first point is the centre of the gradient.

Angle gradient
Starts in an anti-clockwise around the starting point. The size of gradient you drag marks the direction of the colour.

Reflected gradient
This gives a gradient from both sides the starting point, so you should get three stripes of colour with two colours being the same.

Diamond gradient
This gives a diamond shaped gradient.

You can also choose the blending mode and opacity for each gradient. The reverse can be checked which reverses the order of the gradient. You can create a smoother blend by selecting the Dither. And finally set a transparent mask by checking the transparency option.

The Gradient Editor

The gradient editor is the panel where you create your custom or preset gradient. There are two ways to open up the gradient editor. Firstly, with the gradient tool selected you can right click on the canvas, and the editor will open up. Or you can left click on the gradient drop down menu on the options bar. The following gradient editor window will show up.

This is the list of default preset gradients. You can change the preview of the presets to: text, thumbnails or lists which displays the presets into a different format.
This creates a new preset gradient. The new preset will appear in the gradient preview.
This allows you to change the gradient from solid to noise. The noise gradient contains random colours from a specified range.
This is the colour sliders, notice there are two sets of sliders: the top two and the bottom two. The top two are the transparency sliders you can change opacities of each of the sliders. To create another transparency stopper you can click anywhere in between the two stoppers. The bottom two stoppers allow you to change the colours. Dragging the stoppers blends the colours together and clicking in between the two stoppers creates a new colour stopper.