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In the 
Artists use a variety of methods to create gradation, depending upon the art medium, and the precise desired effect. Blending,
A major innovation was the development of halftone photography in the late 19th century. Halftone photography involves creating a reproduction of an original photograph by taking an image of it using a Photomechnical transfer camera (PMT), with a halftone screen as an intermediary tool to create gradation in the final reproduction. Halftone screens are a plate or film, made up of a continuous pattern of small dots, and when used in a photomechanical transfer camera, the halftone screen serves as an image filter. The invention of halftone photography was an important milestone, allowing photographs to be reproduced for mass publication in newspapers and magazines.
Analog photography is limited by the materials and equipment used by the photographer to capture gradation. These constraints are eliminated in digital photography, where software can be used to manipulate photograph images to create gradation.
In the visual arts
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile art ...
, gradation is the technique of gradually transitioning from one hue
In color theory, hue is one of the main properties (called color appearance parameters) of a color, defined technically in the CIECAM02 model as "the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that ...
to another, or from one shade to another, or one texture
Texture may refer to:
Science and technology
* Surface texture, the texture means smoothness, roughness, or bumpiness of the surface of an object
* Texture (roads), road surface characteristics with waves shorter than road roughness
* Texture ...
to another. Space, distance, atmosphere, volume, and curved or rounded forms are some of the visual effects created with gradation.
Artists use a variety of methods to create gradation, depending upon the art medium, and the precise desired effect. Blending, shading
Shading refers to the depiction of depth perception in 3D models (within the field of 3D computer graphics) or illustrations (in visual art) by varying the level of darkness. Shading tries to approximate local behavior of light on the ob ...
, hatching
Hatching (french: hachure) is an artistic technique used to create tonal or shading
Shading refers to the depiction of depth perception in 3D models (within the field of 3D computer graphics) or illustrations (in visual art) by varying ...
and crosshatching
Hatching (french: hachure) is an artistic technique used to create tonal or shading effects by drawing (or painting or scribing) closely spaced parallel lines. (It is also used in monochromatic representations of heraldry to indicate what t ...
are common methods. A fading effect can be created with pastels
A pastel () is an art medium in a variety of forms including a stick, a square a pebble or a pan of color; though other forms are possible; they consist of powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those use ...
by using a torchon.
Gradation in photography
Gradation can also be useful in composing photographs. The early decades of the development of photography involved much effort and experimentation aimed at improving gradation detail in photographs. Different materials were tested in producing lithographs and early photographs, with steady improvement in producing detailed gradation. In 1878, one photographer wrote:
A major innovation was the development of halftone photography in the late 19th century. Halftone photography involves creating a reproduction of an original photograph by taking an image of it using a Photomechnical transfer camera (PMT), with a halftone screen as an intermediary tool to create gradation in the final reproduction. Halftone screens are a plate or film, made up of a continuous pattern of small dots, and when used in a photomechanical transfer camera, the halftone screen serves as an image filter. The invention of halftone photography was an important milestone, allowing photographs to be reproduced for mass publication in newspapers and magazines.
Analog photography is limited by the materials and equipment used by the photographer to capture gradation. These constraints are eliminated in digital photography, where software can be used to manipulate photograph images to create gradation.
References
{{Branches of the visual arts Artistic techniques