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Inspiring
January 16, 2017
Answered

Select Gradient Color in the actions panel

  • January 16, 2017
  • 5 replies
  • 454 views

Greetings forum, Long time adobe user first post,

I am looking to create a custom action to help me color massive amount of shapes in a custom illustration I am doing.

I'd like the action work as follows, "select 1st color swatch" -> stop (I will then use an eye dropper to pick color) -> "select 2nd color swatch" -> stop (then once again I will then use an eye dropper to pick the 2nd color)

I am hoping this action will minimize the clicking and dragging that I'd have to do to manually select the swatches in the gradient...

Not sure how to program the select first color in gradient in the actions panel.

Any thoughts on if this is possible?...

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer noel4nopun

you got me thinking in a different direction, and I think I've found an answer to an easier way to select colors in a gradient, thought I'd share my findings with this post in case anyone else could benefit,

Select gradient, select stop button select i (for the eye dropper) "Shift" click the color you want sampled...

now gonna try and stream line this a bit more, but for now I didn't know that's how you can change colors in a gradient

5 replies

Inspiring
January 16, 2017

good note, the current color space I am in is RGB so I should be good, excellent note for if I was doing an offset print project...

Inspiring
January 16, 2017

next step would be the need for a key command to select first and or the second color within a gradient

noel4nopunAuthorCorrect answer
Inspiring
January 16, 2017

you got me thinking in a different direction, and I think I've found an answer to an easier way to select colors in a gradient, thought I'd share my findings with this post in case anyone else could benefit,

Select gradient, select stop button select i (for the eye dropper) "Shift" click the color you want sampled...

now gonna try and stream line this a bit more, but for now I didn't know that's how you can change colors in a gradient

Mike_Gondek10189183
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 16, 2017

Sounds good.

Be careful with shift eyedropper as that used to select the RGB value of what was sent to the screen, so the color always looked good, but were off in term of CMYK. Have not seen an official notice for Adobe about what happened, but I do believe in CC2015 I started to see the color being granted color accurately. Might depend now on what you have selected as obviously a linked image would still be problematic.

Inspiring
January 16, 2017

thanks for weighing in, i actually care less about creating an action as to finding a better way to select colors in a gradient, I have been on a mac for the past 20 years, and recently switched to a PC, so I'm not sure what option clicking on a color in the swatch panel would do, I guess I am looking for a quick key command way to select colors for a gradient without the usuall double clicking a stop button in the gradient slider...

Mike_Gondek10189183
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 16, 2017

Illustrator actions are very limited. You could try posting here as scripts might be able to do this.
Illustrator Scripting

https://forums.adobe.com/community/illustrator/illustrator_scripting

Have you tried selecting a gradient swatch,  option clicking on a colors in swatches panel. If your swatches panel is not filed with colors you can do that with easily with swatches Flyout Menu >> Add selected colors.