Sampling Color

Eyedropper

The Eyedropper tool allows you to sample a specific color from part of an object, shape, or image inside or outside of Illustrator. You can sample color, stroke weight, opacity, and other attributes and apply them to other objects to keep the appearance of objects consistent. To make this work smoothly, you will need to set the Eyedropper preferences to choose what it will sample and what it will apply to your selected object.

Double-click on the Eyedropper tool in the toolbar to open and set the preferences. In the Eyedropper preferences. You can choose what the Eyedropper will sample (left column) and what it will apply (right column). Type attributes can also be sampled and applied to other type. The Eyedropper tool will not sample and apply shape attributes.

Sample a Specific Color

Shift+click to sample a color from a specific point on a gradient, pattern, mesh object, or placed image and apply the color to the selected fill or stroke.

Add Additional Attributes

Select a shape you want to add additional attributes to, select the Eyedropper tool, and hold Shift+Option (Mac)/Shift+Alt (PC) while clicking on another object to add the appearance attributes of the object to the selected object. This example has a shape with a purple stroke, no fill. With the shape selected, select the Eyedropper tool and Shift+Option/Alt click on another shape to add the attributes to the original shape. This added the green fill and the orange stroke in addition to the original purple stroke.

Raster Sample Size is for sampling color from images in Illustrator or outside Illustrator. Point Sample will sample the color from the pixel you click in the image. If you want more consistent color to be sampled from and image, choose a 3 x 3 Average (this gives you colors from 9 pixels of color) or a 5 x 5 Average (an average of 25 pixels of color). Once the color is sampled, it will appear in the Color panel and can be added to the Swatches panel. Images are sampled in RGB color regardless of the color mode you are using in Illustrator.

To sample a color from outside Illustrator, you can select the Eydropper tool, click on your artboard, and keep the mouse clicked, then move the cursor to any other image or item outside of Illustrator (your desktop or other application window) and sample the object. To see the color you are sampling, have the Color panel open while sampling outside Illustrator and the color window will display the sampled color. Once the cursor is over the item you want to sample, release the mouse to sample the color.

Color Won’t Sample

When sampling colors from an image with the Eyedropper tool, you may find that the color will not sample from the image no matter what you click on. This can be very frustrating, especially if the Eyedropper tool will sample other colors not from the image. Double-click on the Eyedropper tool to open the preferences. Uncheck the Appearance box on the left side under Eyedropper Picks Up, leaving all the other boxes checked, and click OK. Now the Eyedropper tool will sample the colors from the image as you would expect.

Adding Sampled Colors

To add colors to the Swatches panel from an image, I set up a palette of shapes to add the selected colors to, like a painter’s palette. Draw a rectangle (or any shape) for each color you would like to sample from the image. Select a rectangle, then select the Eyedropper tool and click on a portion of the image to sample to the color, and the rectangle will fill with that color. Select the next rectangle and repeat the sample process until you have all the colors you want to use from the image.

To add the selected colors that you sampled from the image, select the rectangles with the colors and choose Add Selected Colors from the Swatches panel dropdown menu. This will add all the selected colors to the swatch list, and make them global colors in the process.