Question

Eyedropper tool not retaining selected colour

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
January 2, 2026
4 replies
276 views

Since Illustrator 30.1 update when I hold shift to select a colour, or do it manually from the colour picker, the colour will revert to grey or white. Has anyone found a fix for this?colour selectedupon exit, colour reverts to grey?

Bug

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Lisa31410873ly99Author

Fun added bug: if I move the item I am trying to select color from OFF the art board, I can consistently select the colour. If it is ON the art board, it will pick white.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @Lisa31410873ly99,

Thanks for sharing the details. Could you kindly share a link to a sample file, along with a screen recording of your exact workflow and the issue, so we can investigate this further with the team?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

Ares Hovhannesyan

Community Expert

Is it possible to share a file for testing?

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Is this probably your problem? https://youtu.be/z7ZbNGraIZA

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Lisa31410873ly99Author

I wish it was! Great explanation of the feature, but I'm working on CMYK mode for sure, I have verified in the colour panel drop down.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Lisa31410873ly99,

Thanks for sharing this. I wasn't able to reproduce the issue on my end, so I'd like to gather a bit more detail. Could you please confirm the OS you're seeing this on and let me know whether the behavior is consistent or intermittent? Also, does this happen only with this particular file or across all files?

As a first step, please try manually resetting Illustrator preferences and then test again. You can follow the steps here: https://adobe.ly/4jGOFm9 and this short video shows the manual reset process: https://adobe.ly/3N2qcLJ

Additionally, please make sure the Color panel is not set to Grayscale. You can check this from the Window Menu > Color panel > Hamburger menu and switch it to CMYK or RGB, depending on your workflow.

There's also a similar community thread you can refer to here. Please check it out and let me know if it matches what you're seeing: https://adobe.ly/496347y

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

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Lisa31410873ly99Author

hi there Abhishek!

I am using Mac OS Ventura 13.6.1

Behaviour is consistant in occurance, across all files.

Unfortunately the offered solutions have not resolved the bug. To clarify more, I am attempting to colour pick from a pattern fill, which I am able to do using version 29.8.4

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