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alexy22084847
alexy22084847
Participant
February 3, 2026
Question

Copy/Paste Gradient mesh turns it into raster image

  • February 3, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 41 views

I saw this post a few weeks ago but now that the community page has updated it’s MIA. When copying and pasting a gradient mesh in Illustrator, the mesh is rasterized. I tried exporting as an SVG, EPS, and Ai file and placing those in the document, but those get rasterized too. There is currently no way to transfer a gradient mesh from one document to another.

    2 replies

    Monika Gause
    Community Expert
    Monika GauseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 3, 2026

    Do you have anything installed in your system that messes with the clipboard?

      alexy22084847
      alexy22084847Author
      Participant
      February 3, 2026

      I have Windows clipboard history enabled, but I’ve had that for years. This seems to be a recent change in illustrators behavior.

      Monika Gause
      Community Expert
      Monika GauseCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      February 3, 2026

      Can you turn it off and try again?

      alexy22084847
      alexy22084847Author
      Participant
      February 3, 2026

      Actually, I did find a workaround. If you drag the mesh from one document into the other it works. But copy/pasting does not.

      B
      Community Expert
      Bobby HendersonCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      February 4, 2026

      I’m using Illustrator on computers running Win11 Pro. I can copy gradient mesh objects to the clipboard and paste them into other Illustrator documents. I even tried copying a mesh object from a CMYK document and pasting it into a RGB-based Illustrator document to see if that would cause any problems. The mesh object still pasted in editable form.

       

      Windows’ clipboard history feature doesn’t seem to have any effect on the problem (I usually leave that feature disabled anyway). Does your computer have any other applications running in the background that might interfere with the clipboard? It might good to double check the Clipboard Handling settings in Illustrator’s Preferences (PDF should be checked). If that doesn’t solve the problem I’d try deleting the Illustrator Preferences file to make the app re-build it. That step usually solves a lot of little odd problems.

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