2025 Eyedropper Tool

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 6, 2025
2 replies
1792 views

So Adobe decided witht he most recent update to change how one of the most fundamental tools works.... The eyedropper tool.

The fun part is there is no freaking documentation on the changes of hotkeys, etc. Holding shift now no longer allows you to grab a color from a stroke and apply it to a fill, now instead it grabs a specific color within a gradient, etc. It's a nice feature, but how about you use one of those really annoying tooltip popups or the Home screen (new features section) for something useful for a change and explain how the new version of this 30 year old tool works.

Thanks for making my day harder as always.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Please show a screenshot that has the object you are copying the color from as well as what is focused: stroke or fill.

E

eric_5223Author

Known Participant

E

eric_5223Author

Known Participant

Thanks Monika,

Please read the footnote I attached stating that I took those screenshots after to make it easier for you and forgot to focus on the strokes in the restaging before capture. They were in fact selected at the time and thats why the end results have strokes and not fills.

To clarify, the issue is that using shift with the eyedropper used to only grab the swatch color. Now it grabs colors from the screen rather than the object. So, if I want to take a gradient from a 5px stroke and add it to a 1 px stroke, without carrying over the stroke width (appearance), I can't because the gradients don't match exactly because it no longer grabs the swatch and if I dont hold shift, I get the right color, but also all the undesired appearance settings like stroke width, etc. Its especially harder if there are other layers involved and blend modes used when trying shift and eyedrop.

This feels alot more like a raster eyedropper like in Photoshop rather than what I have experienced with Illustrator since the beginning.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @eric_5223,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I tried replicating this behavior on my end but could not. Would you mind confirming the exact version of the OS/Illustrator so I can better assist you? Also, try running Illustrator under Safe Mode (Windows / macOS) and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

E

eric_5223Author

Known Participant

It's a new feature that was just not addressed. If you can't replicate it,
I don't believe you are using the newest version.

Your suggestions will not make any difference in this scenario, but thank
you for reaching out.

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