In this Adobe Illustrator Essentials lesson, you'll learn how to color your illustrations, work with the Eyedropper Tool, save color palettes to use across files, and recolor your artwork.
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With a shape is selected, its fill (inner) and stroke (outline) color are shown in the toolbar:
Which ever is on top, whether that's the stroke or fill, is the one you'll be changing if you select a color from the
To switch which color is on top, click the arrow button next to the fill and stroke colors.
Below the fill and stroke colors, you have options for a solid color, gradient, and no color.
Here are some handy keyboard shortcuts when working with color:
You can also double click on the fill or stroke color to bring up the Color Picker.
From here, you can select a new color from the spectrum, adjust Hue, Saturation, and Brightness values, adjust Red, Green, and Blue values, or type/paste in a Hex code. A hex code, or hexadecimal code, is a numerical representation of a color in the form of a 6 digit number. If you find a color you want to use online, you can often find the hex code to use that exact color in your artwork.
When working on digital graphics, like for animation in After Effects, you'll want to use RGB colors (not CMYK which are for print).
This is set up when creating a new document (see setting up workspace lesson), but you can easily change the color mode later. Go to File > Document Color Mode. Note that this will change the look of your colors slightly.
If you import graphics created in CMYK mode into After Effects, they'll look slightly different than what you've been working with in Illustrator (because it's converting the colors to RGB).
To apply a gradient to the stroke or fill of a shape, in the toolbar, make sure the one you want is on top, then click the gradient button.
There are three types of gradients:
In the Gradient panel, you can:
You can also adjust the blending of the gradient right on the shape if you first click the "Edit Gradient" button in the Gradient panel.
In order to adjust the gradient on a shape, the fill or stroke–whichever the gradient is applied to–needs to be on top in the Fill & Stroke boxes in the toolbar.
The Freeform Gradient option allows you to place different colors anywhere within the shape.
With the shape selected, you can click and drag to move color points, adjust the spread of the color by dragging the dotted circle, and click an empty area to add a new color. In the Gradient panel, you can adjust the opacity or spread of the selected color, or delete it by hitting the trashcan icon.
You can also switch from color points to lines as an alternative way to blend colors in the gradient. With the Lines option, you can draw on the shape (with a tool similar to the Pen Tool) to direct the color where to go.
To create a gradient on a stroke, make sure the stroke is on top in the Fill & Stroke Color boxes in the toolbar. Then click the gradient button.
There are three options for gradients on a stroke: apply gradient within stroke, apply gradient along stroke, and apply gradient across stroke.
Note that the stroke needs to be aligned to the outside (in the Stroke panel) in order for "apply gradient along stroke" and "apply gradient across stroke" to be options.
The Eyedropper Tool is useful for sampling colors and recoloring artwork. There are two ways to use the Eyedropper Tool:
If you click on another object with the Eyedropper Tool, it samples all attributes of object, including the fill color, stroke color, corners, stroke alignment, stroke weight, etc. and applies this to the selected shape. You can also copy gradients with the Eyedropper Tool. If you're working with text, using the Eyedropper will also copy the font and other attributes of the text.
If you only want to sample (copy) a color and not the other attributes of the object you're sampling, hold the shift key while sampling (clicking) with the Eyedropper Tool. This also works to sample a color from within a gradient (rather than sampling the entire gradient).
Make sure that whatever color (whether that's fill or stroke) you want to change on the selected object is on top in the Fill & Stroke boxes in the toolbar before sampling a color using the Eyedropper Tool and holding shift to just copy the color.
If you're sampling a lot of colors, here's a tip to make the workflow faster: With the Eyedropper Tool, hold the ⌘/Ctrl key to select another object to recolor. That way you don't have to switch back and forth between the Selection Tool and Eyedropper Tool.
This method can be a quick way to recolor a lot of objects with the same colors.
With the Eyedropper Tool, click an empty area in the artboard or canvas and hold while dragging outside of Illustrator to a color you want to sample. When your cursor is over the color you want to sample, lift up your mouse to sample it.
Double click on the Eyedropper Tool in the toolbar to access options to customize how this tool works.
The Appearance panel allows you to adjust the fill, stroke, and opacity, and add multiple fills and strokes to an object.
If you add effects to objects, those can also be adjusted from the Appearance panel.
Note that the layer order in the Appearance panel matters!
You can adjust the opacity of objects and set the blending mode in the Transparency panel.
Masks will be covered in the next lesson.
You can save colors as swatches to make it easy to reuse the colors within the same project and across other Illustrator files.
To save a color swatch:
Now your new swatch should appear in the Swatches panel. If you set the color up as a global swatch, there will be a white triangle in the bottom right corner.
To apply the swatch to graphics, select the graphic and click the swatch.
To edit an existing swatch:
Double click the swatch in the Swatches panel.
To save a swatch group (multiple colors):
This will create a new swatch group:
To save a swatch group to use in other Illustrator files:
To open a saved swatch group:
You can also save colors in Libraries. Libraries can be useful because everything in your library is available across Adobe apps.
To save a color to libraries:
To apply colors saved in Libraries:
Unfortunately, recoloring shapes in After Effects from Libraries doesn't work (and sampling from Libraries with the Eyedropper often produces a color that's slightly off).
The Magic Wand Tool is for selecting things that have something in common. It can be really helpful when recoloring artwork.
With the Magic Wand Tool, click an object and it will select all objects with that same fill color.
To add to a selection, hold shift while clicking an object with the Magic Wand Tool.
To remove from a selection, hold option/Alt while clicking an object with the Magic Wand Tool.
To change how the Magic Wand Tool makes its selection, double click on the tool in the toolbar:
The Color Guide panel can be helpful for finding other colors that go well with a selected color. You can explore other harmony rules in the dropdown menu.
To recolor artwork, go to Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork. From here there are many options to help you come up with new color combos for your artwork.
You can also click over to the Generative Recolor tab and type in a prompt for the AI to come up with a color pallette.
In the next lesson you'll learn all about clipping mattes and masks; both ways to crop artwork to control the visibility of objects.
