I created this snippet as a small utility to populate Michael Vandaniker's Heat Map application with it's necessary gradient information.

It makes it possible to extract a color array for every pixel of a hand drawn gradient (giving you tons of control over the color and style of the gradient). Check out Michael's Heat Map application here: http://michaelvandaniker.com/blog/2008/07/06/how-to-make-heat-maps-in-flex/

I think this could have numerous other applications. Make something cool.