Gradients on fonts in illustrator

[Ellie VdB]

Why is creating gradients on editable fonts so hard? Why is it different then adding a gradient color to a shape? There is no good reason to make it this complicated. It is everything but intuitive or handy to use. It should work exactly the same as with shapes to optimize workflow. All the extra steps via the appearance panel, just make it inconvenient and annoying. Its also not possible to manually adjust the angle of a gradient on the stroke of an editable type. Even when you change it to outlines, its still not possible to use the gradient tool to adjust the angle easily. why why why is this so counter-intuitive ? 

[Bobby Henderson · Accepted solution]

I would suggest making a feature request at the Illustrator User Voice forum:
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/

Developers read the bug reports and feature requests at that forum more often than the Adobe Community Forums. BTW, I agree it's cumbersome to have to use various steps in the Appearance panel to apply fills to live type objects. Some neat things can be done to objects using the Appearance panel. But users should have the option to simply select live letters and apply a fill to them directly with one click.

[Ellie VdB]

Thanks, that's helpfull 

And i agree with you, keep it simple for the basics, the adjustments can perfectly appear in the appearance panel too for extra manipulation or layering of effects. but the basics should be fast and easy imho. Now i have to find a youtube video every time i want to do a gradient on type because i forgot how to do it again... SO annoying and time consuming.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"Why is creating gradients on editable fonts so hard? "

"It should work exactly the same as with shapes"

It can't. Fonts in vector files are rendered at the output device, so there are no shapes to apply the gradient to yet.

Yes, there are ways to add gradients to editable text using the Appearance panel (a simple google search will show you many videos demonstrating various ways), but they work in an entirely different way out of necessity, by adding an "effect" overlay that will be rendered at the output device AFTER the fonts are rendered in the output device. These can only be applied to the entire text object, and not individual letters. One has to convert text to outlines to treat them like other vector shapes.

[Kurt Gold]

The request is probably just about making the gradient colouring process easier (or more obvious). No matter what technical conditions there are.

InDesign can handle that for entire text objects pretty well. It can also handle individual characters, but only a section of the entire gradient swatch will then be displayed and it's fault-prone when converting the type objects to paths. So, basically gradient fills for type objects are not better in InDesign, but easier to apply.

[Bobby Henderson]

Rival applications like Affinity Designer and CorelDRAW allow varying flat colors and even gradient fills to be applied to text objects in a straight-forward manner. They not only allow such fills on their equivalents of point text objects, but they'll even allow gradients to be applied to area text objects. It's probably not a good idea to apply a gradient fill to a block of body copy; even if the fill works on screen it may not output successfully in print.

In either Affinity Designer or CorelDRAW if a point text object has a gradient fill and the type object is converted to raw outlines the gradient will maintain its normal properties. The only exception is if the text object has a lot of lettering and goes over a limit of number of anchor points allowed in a single combined object.

[Ellie VdB]

As Kurt analysed correctly, I am well aware there are ways to get a gradient on an editable font, but its not user friendly and counter intuitive to work with and slows down workflow. This should be fixed so it does work fluently instead of having to dig through different, often hidden, menus or panels. I'm sure this is something they can fix if they want.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I get that. I was just pointing out the technical differences between objects and type and why it's easier for one over the other. I can't speak to their current versions, but the Corel versions I used to use converts editable text with an applied gradient to outline objects on output (e.g  it's no longer editable, selectable or accessible in a PDF); whereas Illustrator maintains editable text in a PDF

[Bobby Henderson]

Perhaps they changed/improved something recently. A PDF output from a recent/current version of CorelDRAW will keep a type object maintained as live text if it has a gradient fill applied. The text object will get converted to curves (using Corel's terminology) if the type is set using variable fonts.