How to remove gradient / drop shadow for UITabbaritem in iOS 5 - iphone

Question

with iOS 5, there is UI Appearance, is it possible to remove the gradient easy way ?
i do this to customised my tabbar, what can be done to remove the gradient ?
thanks for reading
-(void)UIAppearances
{
//set the background of tab bar
UIImageView *imageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"navbar_bgrd.png"]];
if ([[[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion] floatValue] > 4.9) {
//iOS 5
//[self.tabBarController.tabBar insertSubview:imageView atIndex:1];
[[UITabBar appearance] setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"navbar_bgrd.png"]];
[[UITabBar appearance] setSelectionIndicatorImage:
[UIImage imageNamed:#"navbaractive.png"]];
[[UITabBarItem appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:
[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
[UIColor colorWithRed:75.0/255.0 green:75.0/255.0 blue:75.0/255.0 alpha:1.0], UITextAttributeTextColor,
[UIColor clearColor], UITextAttributeTextShadowColor,
[NSValue valueWithUIOffset:UIOffsetMake(0, 1)], UITextAttributeTextShadowOffset,
nil] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[[UITabBarItem appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:
[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
[UIColor whiteColor], UITextAttributeTextColor,
[UIColor clearColor], UITextAttributeTextShadowColor,
[NSValue valueWithUIOffset:UIOffsetMake(0, 1)], UITextAttributeTextShadowOffset,
nil] forState:UIControlStateSelected];
//nav bar
[[UINavigationBar appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:
[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
[UIFont fontWithName:#"Rokkitt" size:28.0],
UITextAttributeFont,
nil]];
}
else {
//iOS 4.whatever and below
[self.tabBarController.tabBar insertSubview:imageView atIndex:0];
}
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleBlackOpaque animated:NO];
}

Answer 1

UITabBar can either take an image and use its alpha channel (opacity) to build the selected/unselected images or take two processed images to use as is.
You'll have to provide the images yourself to the UITabBarItem with setFinishedSelectedImage:withFinishedUnselectedImage:. There's no other way to affect the processing it does to the images besides changing the color of the gradient with UITabBar's selectedImageTintColor appearance property.