Illustrator Quick Tip: Faster Gradient-Color Adjustments
A reader recently asked me about using the eyedropper tool to adjust the (one of 2+) colors in an Illustrator gradient. If you’ve never witnessed this frustration, it is quite annoying. In Illustrator, when using the gradient palette, (Adobe should have figured this out by now) you can’t double-click on one of the gradient color sliders to bring up the color picker? Furthermore, if you click on one of the color sliders of your gradient, and then use the Eyedropper Tool to change that color, Illustrator replaces your gradient fill with a solid color. Every. Time. Although I don’t have a 100% fix for this, I do have a keyboard shortcut to ease your pain…
OK, like I said, not a 100% fix but . . . here’s another way to adjust your gradients in Illy. Here we go.
You have a gradient, and you need to change ONE of the colors in that gradient. (I’m only going to use a 2-color gradient in this quick example)
Here’s the 1-2-3 bam! quick tip… (see illustration below)
1. Select your shape/artwork.
2. In the gradient palette, click once on the color slider you want to adjust.
3. Hold the Option/Alt key and click on a (solid) color swatch, and only the selected gradient color will be changed!
The result:
This method is easy, but one of the drawbacks is that you must have your color in the swatches palette beforehand. It’s always nice to have another option, but hopefully our friends at Adobe will figure out how feature-bland the Gradient Palette is in Illustrator, and soon! (I want 360 degree click and drag angle-adjustment, like Photoshop!)
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Bittbox in portuguese please!!!
@Marcelo,
I’ll turn on the Portuguese. Can you give me some feedback on the traslation?
Check the sidebar.
~Bitt
I absolutely hate the gradient panel in Illustrator. I personally feel like that entire application could use some shuffling to reach a more cognitively intuitive interface.
Thanks for the tip. I hope Adobe, or some free-plugin developer reads this blog.
hi there,
I have another way for that kind of color adjustment : I select the color slider I want to adjust, and I double-click on the fill color selection box at the bottom of the toolbox, this brings up the color picker, and that’s it…
this works on CS2, I don’t know for other versions…
There are a number of AI features that frustrate the hell out of me – this being one of them. Thanks for a solution.
p.s. Is it wrong that I sometimes wish Freehand didn’t die?
hi,
The portuguese translation look good, not perfect but you can understand the point of articles.
And about this color adjustment, i do it in another away. I select the object with the gradient, then go swatches and drag and drop the color i want to the colors slides.
Drag & drop from the swatches palette is the way to it to.. it does take some modification in your palette setup, so that the swatches and gradient palette doesn’t expand ontop of each other.
Thank you! I really neede this! I’ve been fighting with that frustrating palett for some time now, and I’ve never really understood what i did right when I got the colors I wanted. Thank you very much!
Btw: thanks for all the other great tips too! =)
[...] (forrás és illusztrált leírás: bittbox.com) [...]
One million thanks!!!!! It’s really a pain in the ass the gradient with illustrator…
Nice tip! That Option key does all kinds of cool things.
As always, thanks for the tip! I think Wal’s got the best method though- it enables use of the color picker on-the-fly.
I agree with the statements about illustrator being too convoluted and counter-intuitive. And you’re right, the gradient palette is bland!
2 random gripes:
Why have separate menus for “filter” and “effect”? All the good stuff is tucked away with useless raster-based effects (ie. drop shadow)
Why-oh-why are illustrator’s bezier handles so tiny? Photoshop’s pen tool is a dream by comparison.
Thank heaven for this site; hopefully Adobe reads it as much as me.
Thanks so much. I’ve been a long time Photoshop user but I’m relatively new to Illustrator and this was driving me nuts.
Another great bit of “Illustrator Zen” enlightenment. Thanks again Bitt!
This is seriously one of my largest gripes about Illustrator.
Thanks for the handy shortcut!!
This will save a surprising amount of time.
Too bad you can only use swatches.
u r a genius!
gradient is Illustrator worst feature, no argue.
you can pick a color by clicking the color palette, option-click or dragging a swatch to the slider. but then… still NO eyedrop and -oh god – no TRANSPARENCY!
why cant I have a gradient from color to nothing? It’s so enormously useful that I cant believe its not possible… even Flash can do it… aaaaaaarrrgh
I agree with all of you. Illustrator’s Gradient palette hasn’t evolved along with the rest of the program. In fact, you might even say that it’s evolution has been stagnant for almost a [decade] now. Too me, transparency, manual angle input, and color picking are it’s major flaws.
Adobe, are you listening?
~Bitt
[...] “bitbox” me encuentro con este tip, para cambiar rapidamente el color de nuestros degradados, ya que como [...]
[...] Illustrator Quick Tip: Faster Gradient-Color Adjustments offers what I believe to be the best solution to the great annoyance in Illustrator – the inability to adjust gradient colors easily and keep track of your changes too. [...]
Couldn’t agree more about the obvious flaws in the gradients palette.
About gradients going from a color to nothing (transparency) you had a great tip on that a couple of months ago Bitt, that really changed my world, and that was the one on transparency masks in Illustrator. How hard is it really to just make a solid fill shape, copy & paste in front, and then make the top shape a opacity mask in the transparency palette?
Still, hope Adobe is reading this because it wouldn’t hurt with a few updates on this in the next version.
Thanks BittBox for at least giving us all an opportunity to exchange or ideas and solutions for this annoying problem!
Wow, thanks a lot fBitt. Really appreciate the research and the result of it. I think its even better to know that I am not the only AI user that gets frustrated with these things.
this site is so refreshing and in such a common language. Im thankful to have been introduced!
Cheers
No problem dersu,
It’s things like these that NEED to be brought out in the open. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Always glad to help.
~Bitt
nice tip! thx
It’s such a useful tip: I will always use it!
Thanks ;)
My way to work with gradients is drag&drop, its the easiest as ive seen… simply select the shape with the gradient, then the gradient palette will show you the current gradient it has, drag&drop the swatch you want to apply to the slider you want it to be and… voila! you just changed your gradient! easy! =)
One of the things it really gets me mad sometimes are the differences between Photoshop and AI, if they are brothers why not make them act alike? for example: i ALWAYS double click on the blank screen of a recent opened PS to open a document… its faster, THING you CANT do on AI… a waste of time… the way the swatches and colors work is another thing… but in fact, there are lots of thinks i would like both programs react like REAL brothers… i hope the Adobe guys read this… =(
gradients…oh god. My Graphic Technology class is doing a 3D rendering project…we can only use AI gradient meshes.
Calling the result a 3D illustration is like putting lipstick & panties on a pig and calling it Playmate of the Year.
I am petitioning the dean of the college to push for something that is actually designed for 3d rendering like CAD or…there’s a new one out that the architecture program is using…forge what it’s called off the top of my head.
Freehand handled gradients much better than Illustrator. They need to fix plenty of things. Now that there is really no competition we\’ll see how that goes.
handy tip and thanx for it. Illustrator’s gradient control is ‘lil bit pain in ther neck.
hope the Illy guys at Adobe will fix this soon.
hi.. thanx for this shortcut.. however has anyone tried removing a already applied colour from a gradient? had 6 colours in one. wanted to delete one of them. but just couldn’t. had to do it all over again. does somebody have a better solution. hello, bittbox?
Oh wow. This is why I love your site. I hope you make a lot of money from it.
Thanks for at least a step in a sane direction (and thanks “wal” for the color-picker tip).
K: In CS2 you can remove a color by dragging the slider out of the palette.
Thanks for the short-cut! It’s funny you mention Photoshop abilities that are not in Illustrator. I personally wish the Transform tool in Illustrator functioned as it does in Photoshop, where I can directly affect the shape instead of inputting numbers for Shear, etc. It seems like a bit of a crapshoot to get it to do the right thing, and I usually give up and find another way to get to the same result. (I started out as a Photoshop user almost exclusively, but I’ve had a bit of Illustrator training by fire these last 2 weeks. The Transform tool has been my one peeve. And my inability to wrap my brain around the Pathfinder tool.)
Actually using Illustrator’s User Interface Brightness setting (aka Progressive UI Fuglification setting) will only encourage Adobe to add more non-features in the future instead of fixing long-standing flaws in AI. ;-)
Thank you so much!! i can’t tell you how much frustration this has feature has caused in illustrator. Compared to photoshop, illustrator has a long way to go before it’s “intuitive”. At least I won’t be swearing at it quite so much now :)
Thanks Esben Thomsen, I didn’t know you could drag and drop the colors from the swatch panel into the gradient colors. Life is going to be so easy from now. I use gradients everywhere – they are wonderful.
thank u a lot!!! I thought of giveing up tu ilustrator till now
do u have a bettrer solution regarding he shortcuts (align left, right, etc) (I’ve made actions for that with shortcut keys but it’s annoyng .) please excuse my bad english (I speak worse than I write :)) hope to see more of your works!
THANKS SO MUCH!!! I have spend hours yesterday and still not figure out how to do that! Thanks for teahcing!
People mentioned that you can drag a color into the gradient from the swatches palette. Say you’re working off of an image using gradient mesh, for example. here’s a tip to quickly setup the color swatches you need.
Use the eyedropper tool to grab the color you want. Then in the swatches palette, just click new swatch -> Ok. If you plan ahead a little bit, you can get the handful of colors you need for the next gradient or two, then drag and drop the colors after with some semblance of workflow.
I agree with wal (a ways up), thats the way I go about it, because if the exact color isn’t in the swatches, you have issues.
Its a really annoying thing, not being able to do something you would think would be the most intuitive of things. OHWELL!
1. open the gradient palette and the color palette
2. in the gradient palette click the color handle you wish to change
3. drag the color sliders in the color palette
thats all – works with CS3
I’m a newbie in Illustrator.
It took me 8 days to kind of figure out how to freaking use the gradient palette.
And I felt so stupid and dumb because i’m a graphic designer. I’m glad to know I was not the only one!
Your tutorials have made me learn a lot and by downloading your frebbies i have figure out many things, so thank you so much~
You are heaven’s sent, bittbox <3
Hi i have a problem with the gradients.. is there a way to make a gradient in illustrator that’s trasparent on one side, like photoshop?
Thanks so much!
Soooo helpful…
Thank you very much for this tip !
I agree with the whole Adobe-late-figuring-out thing…
Please,
ADOBE READ THIS:
THE GRADIENT PALLETTE SUCKS!!!
COPY AND PASTE THE GRADIENTS PALETTE FROM FLASH IN ILLUSTRATOR!!!
and the (F) tool too.
Dont wait for illustrator CS48
please
Thanks a lot, Bitt. Your tip really helps.
First, thanks for running the site, Bitt! Wishing you much success as you’ve been a great resource.
Second, hope OKC is going well for you; I moved from there to Atlanta in September of 2004 and haven’t looked back. Make sure you get to a CityBites if you haven’t already… Are they still around?
Third, I have long struggled with the crude nature of the gradient palette in Illustrator, but have learned (accepted?) that I’ll probably have to work around its limitations for some time.
One of the tricks I’ve learned that’s directly relevant here is that you *can* use the eyedropper tool to grab your color, directly from another object.
1) You’ll want to select the object that has the gradient you want to change.
2) Bring the gradient palette to focus and touch the color box that you want to modify. The indicator arrow on top of the box that points to the color on the ramp will switch from light to dark, to indicate that it’s targeted. Additionally, you’ll see the color in the color palette change to reflect the targeted color box’s current color.
3) Switch to your eyedropper tool.
4) Hold the “Shift” key down and click on the color you want to sample. This tells Illustrator to grab the color and not the fill.
Additionally, by double-clicking on the eyedropper tool in the tools palette, you can set which properties it picks up and applies.
Finally, for anyone looking for transparency in gradients, I’d suggest looking in to using opacity masks. Again, might be considered a work-around, but definitely useful.
Hope this helps!
-Cx
Registered now so that any questions about my comment above can be addressed to me. Thanks!
thank f*k you posted this, that was really doing my head in, illustrator rocks, but its sooo much easier in fireworks.
I just started using Illustrator (yesterday). I was getting uber frustrated with the gradient tool. I ended up just using the preset gradients in the swatch libraries menu, which was simple enough.
I really thought it was just me and my ignorance.
I just want to say that this site, and specifically Caltd’s comment just made my day.
HI,
True that gradient are strange and irritating to use in illustrator. I cant use a dark gradient as i have banding effect and it looks horrible. so don’t know if it will be like that for printing.
Can i just export my gradient from photoshop and it would still be good. Any help ???
Thanks
Jerome
thank christ. I really was struggling with this. Great tip! Thanks.
Thanks for the help. In fubling around in Illustrator and following your tut I found that if I open the swatches pannel and gradient panel at the same time I can click and drag my swatch on to the desired slider…
…WORKS A TREAT, SO EASY!
I still love to hate Illustrator for it’s total lack of lovingness for it’s users.
THANK YOU.
geezus.
THANK YOU!!! I don’t know my way around AI and I needed to do this very thing … change one color. I’m so thankful I found your post doing a search. Thank you!
Emily
Thanks for posting an actual WORKING tip on this. Every other post I came across just said to double click and change the color. Wow at how sickening this is, I was just about to give up on AI and go back to inkscape. This is the second feature of AI that is just so counter intuitive you can’t figure out without going through 3000 tutorials until you find the tip that works for your version.
I like inkscapes minimalism. After working with it for the last 2 years and pushing it to its potential I thought I might buy AI and see what it has to offer. So far it seems bloated with useless features and has a very counter-intuitive UI. I don’t remember FreeHand being this hard to grasp as a newbie.
It doesn’t happen often, but once in a while you come across a really useful tip that ends all your frustrations and annoyances.
I’m really glad I stayed around to catch this tip. Thanks, big time. :)
Thanks a billion. I make vector art randomly and always try avoiding gradient tool in Illustrator, but your tip will add some more effects in my art. Thanks a lot :)
Thanks Bittbox! :)
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Thank you very much!!!
I Actually discovered how to use the eyedropper tool when you use the gradient tool, and I would also say…THANK GOD!!!!
All you have to do is:
1. Select your shape/artwork.
2. In the gradient palette, click once on the color slider you want to adjust.
3. On the toolbox, select the eyedropper tool and… (HERE COMES THE MAGIC) just press the shift button, while picking up the color anywhere in the screen.
YAHOOO!!!!! (hope this is going to save a lot of time…)
Wow, so it wasn’t just me who had trouble with this. Seriously, why couldn’t they just make it like in Flash, where you just double-click on the color slider and the eyedropper comes up, then you can pick any color off the screen… I mean, they’re the same company who makes both programs!!!
Actually the comment just above me was really helpful, even moreso than the article. Thanks Francesco!
i love you Francesco Aloisio. I think i lost a year off of my life trying to learn AI as a photoshop user
EVERYONE HAIL WAL!! that’s the thing i’ve been looking for.. for the lazy ones: ” I select the color slider I want to adjust, and I double-click on the fill color selection box at the bottom of the toolbox, this brings up the color picker, and that’s it…”.. THAT WORKS!!
THANKS!!
Nice one – i hate that grad pallette – know how now. Will use illustrator a whole lot more now with these superb tips. Cheers
WHAT IS WRONG WITH ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR TEAM? HOW CAN THEY NOT FIX THIS ISSUE? SO SO SO ANNOYING… MUCH LIKE THE CAPS I AM USING NOW.
Thanks Bro that really helps me a lot
i find that if you open the swatch panel with the colors you want, then just drag and drop them onto your gradient slider, job done.
hope this helps