Adobe Illustrator CS6: Eyedropper Tool Does not Change the Color of Fill or Stroke

[Guest]

Dear community,

I have a problem with my Illustrator CS6. When I want to change the color of an object (either fill or stroke) with the eyedropper tool I usually hold shift to pick only the color and the object will display the new color. This does not work any more. What happens is the following: the color is only changed in the color panel of the tool bar on the right (see image circle 2) and in the color panel of the tool bar on the left (see image circle 1) but not in the real object (see image red arrow, the fill of the stars, circle 3). This happens to any kind of object I want to change the color by eyedropper.

I searched now every post that I could find to this topic but non gave me any solution. There is one way I could manage to change the color but this is extremely annoying and inconvenient. I have to select the object and select the the color. As seen in the image it is not changing. To do so I have to go to circle 1 change the fill to gradient (the small buttons underneath the big ones)  and then back to fill and mysteriously it will change the color. But this can't be the solution.

Thank you for your suggestions in advance!

Best

Flo

[Mike_Gondek]

Since you provided screenshots am pretty confident I know what is happening, thanks.

Your screenshot show you have type selected, my guess is you are grabbing the green color from the green column in the graph. What is happening is you are assigning the green to the type at the type level, and the black at the character level overrides that.

You need to double-click on the words charter in appearance.

Then throw out the black at the character level, and your asterisk will be chartreuse.

[Guest]

Hey,

thanks for the reply but this does not help.  (I assume charter means characters?!)

When I remove the fill as you described it is an empty fill (circle A) as one would expect:

What you also see is that the - lets call it mode - in circle B is locked to no fill. If I now pick a color with 'shift key + eyedropper' it does not change the color, because it is still locked to no fill (circle B).

Instead I have to manually change the "mode" to "fill" (see next image circle D):

And now I have just the same problem again. If I want to change the color now again it is changed on the left tool bar (circle F) but not on the right (circle E). I have to do the same procedure as described above again or your suggestion.

But this can't be the solution, there has to be something wrong. I can't do this all the time for each object I want to change. And it is not only the case for text but also for every other kind of object. Something is wrong with the "shift + eyedropper" key.

[Mike_Gondek]

Looks like the green fill did not grab for you when you used the eyedropper.

1. Did you double-click on the eyedropper and have appearance checked when sampling.
2. Is the chart a vector path with a fill attribute that can be picked up, or a placed image

Try this by creating some text and a rectangle, let me know fi that works. If you are still having trouble and like to post a copy of the portion your file we are discussing  with dropbox (or similar) would be happy to help.

[Guest]

It is just partially grabbing. Only in the tool bar but not in the real appearance.

1. yes

2. yes

Even if I create a new file the problem remains. It is likely some Illustrator bug or some setting that I don't know.

[Mike_Gondek]

Have never hear of a bug that affects the eyedropper or appearance, anything is possible. You appear to be very adept and have followed my steps exactly, but not giving up on helping you figure this out. Lets try a file created from my computer, and keep this simple.

Can you download the below, option drag a of copy the first example and follow the next 2 steps.

http://files.kaleidoscopechicago.com/_XuytF-LVBT3pCR

appearance test.ai.zip

989 KB

The URL will expire on Feb 25.

If you would like to dropbox a copy of your file, will be glad to try out as I might find something, and using this is a basic daily feature which would be helpful to have working for you

Also did you update the latest patch for CS6?
Adobe - Illustrator : For Macintosh

[Guest]

Thanks a lot for your commitment!

But even with your file it does not work.

I played around with your file and mine and I think now that this appearance panel is corrupted or set up in a wrong way.

What you see on the image: I have chosen the blue color from the blue rectangle. As you can see it added a fill in the appearance of the asterisks but does not display it.

If I now double click characters it shows the green fill.

So what I think now is that the eyedropper is creating a fill on the object that is not inside the characters tab (or in case of vector objects in the right fill tab).

I have to find now a way that does this automatically again without deleting fills and replacing them with new ones manually.

[Mike_Gondek]

Sorry but have to ask. Did you delete the green character fill in your last scresnshot, so that the blue fill at the type level would make the asterisk blue.

Basically this is how appearance works. You can assign a fill at these levels, and the top one has priority:

1. Layer
2. Group
3. Character
4. Type

The eyedropper does not know what to pick up so tries it's best. Keeping you files clean si the easiest way to manage, and remove unused fills, or they drive you crazy later trying to figure out what si going on.

[pgurney]

Hi Flo, Mike,

Although this post is 1 year old, it described the exact problem/issue I've been having in Illustrator.

Now I understand that the CS versions of the Appearance panel facilitate the assignment of 2 "sets" of colors to a text box - the box itself, and the characters within it.

This colorizing process of elements (text + boxes) in the CS versions of Illustrator has become needlessly complicated now.

I do not see the need or value to assign a color to the "text box" and then to have another color supersede it when the actual characters are selected.  It should be clean and simple: click a box, choose a color (whether by color picker a la Flo or by another means) and then the text should colorize. Period. No 2-step process.

[Mike_Gondek]

Should you have a question, feel free to start a post and will be glad to help you. Works best if you start your own post so we can directly address your issue without confusion from previous posts.

Yes this can be very aggravating when all you want to do is simply eyedropper to pick up an attribute and get the wrong result. But once you master there are some amazing things you can do.

I for example just did this to a create stroke only to the outside of my entire logo. But you have to move the stroke below the word contents to get this to work on the logo as a group rather than each individual element.

Am sure I can help you with you text questions, just give us screenshots and the important details.