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Stroking a path with a solid colour is easy enough but, is there away of stroking with a gradient.
I know you can do this to a shape path via layer styles, but I can't create an open shape path and stroke it with a gradient, nor for that matter, can I create a closed shape path without a fill, which would be fine. Is this not possible in PS(7).
Sorry, I have a hard time to understand what you really want even after I read the question many times, so excuse me if I come up with the wrong solution.
You want to stroke a path with a gradient, but it shouldn't be a (colored) shape, right?
Well, stroking a path with a layer style doesn't work, stroking shapes with a layer style does work. But I guess you don't want the shape, just the gradient stroke. In that case you have to set Fill to 0% (see example)
Elysian...That perfect, I couldn't find a way to create a shape without a fill, nor a way to remove the fill other than selecting and deleting, which was not ideal. Have only just upgraded to PS7, now I know how useful that second slider on the layer palette is.
Have now had a look at the Photoshop techniques site. It's probably my inexperience, but they appear to "talk in tongues" [confused] 8} [confused]
sPectre is clearly ably to apply a gradient stroke to an open path but, I'm at a loss to figure out how he did it.
I did consider a path that appears open but is closed"very tightly" by looping back on itself. It would still be stroked twice though and I suspect this is not the solution.
Yeah Sark - it's a whole new ballgame on that level.
It's quite an interesting topic. The little I could understand was the following (for stroking paths with gradients):
1. Create a layer and fill it with your gradient of choice.
2. Do your path thing
3. Create a new layer and stroke the path on that layer using the "Smudge tool" (R). Make sure your settings for the smudge tool indicate that you use "all layers". You can also use the "simulate pressure" setting if you want.
4. Then you can hide the background gradient layer - and there you have it (sort of).
Some of the other methods they used included stroking sub-paths and some play with the brushes (opacity jitter). But that was a bit beyond me.
Messing around last night I thought I had solved sPECtre's method, but not so sure.
If you create a path and stroke it, you can apply a layer style to the stroke using Inside as the option and setting a pixel thickness that's larger than half your original stroke thickness. You can then use the gradient options in the Layer styles dialogue.
The only problem is that layer styles only fill the stroke rather than follow it along its path, as would a foreground to background stroke. Also, because it is just filling a stroke of pixels, it doesn't flow underneath paths that overlap as in sPECtre's example.
Maybe sPECtre cheated or as you say, they are just at a different level.
No, I did not cheat. [doh] [bustagut] and I don't consider myself at another level... I'm just twisted, sometimes
And it is rather Phosphor's method of using smudge and an underlying gradient...
Note that only the post with the text Phosphor is one that I did, the first one is from Phosphor himself.
My technique was to have the brush set in the color jitter on fade mode (make sure that you have the default colors for the background and foreground), then I have an gradient map adjustment layer...
Firstly, no offence was intended by the suggestion you cheated. I had just considered you might have stroked subpaths, of the main paths, seperately. No harm in that but, not quite achieving the intended goal. Clearly this was not your method.
I'm still not 100% clear how you managed to get the colours to follow the paths so directly, where they overlap is particularly impressive. I'm not at my PC right now, so cannot play around with the gradient map and colour jitter. Will give this a go tonight, as your results are still clearly the best example i've seen yet.
Stroking paths 
or as you say, they are just at a different level.
Linear Mode
