AG Color Select Tool Operation

As the AG Color Select tool has several keypresses which can add or change its functionality, we suggest installing the free Astute Graphics plugin Astute Buddy, which creates a panel that dynamically updates to inform you of the various keys which can be pressed in the tool’s current context.

To use the AG Color Select tool, simply position it over an art object whose color you want to pick up. By default, the tool continually shows a large preview of the current color in the center of the cursor using an annotated “chip” next to the cursor:

AG Color Select Example

When the previewed color is the desired one, clicking with the tool assigns it to the current fill or stroke, whichever is active. If one or more artwork objects are selected, the color is also assigned to that art’s fill or stroke, if they exist, just as with the native Eyedropper tool when pressing the Shift key (which forces color-only mode). However, unlike the eyedropper, the AG Color Select tool will work with live effects:

AG Color Select Vs. Native Eyedropper

When a semi-transparent object is sampled with the native Eyedropper in color mode, it does not “see” the transparency and instead picks up the full-strength color. However, AG Color Select gives you a choice of how to handle semi-transparent objects. When saving a color to a swatch, or if no objects are selected, transparency can’t be retained, so AG Color Select will flatten the transparency and pick up the reduced strength color. But when assigning the color to the fill or stroke of selected objects and the Shift key is held down, the objects(s) are given the full-strength color but have their stroke or fill opacity changed to match the original color:

AG Color Select Vs. Native Eyedropper Example

To save the selected color directly to a swatch, hold down the Option/Alt key when clicking:

AG Color Select Save to Swatch

To save as a global swatch, hold down Shift in addition to Option/Alt:

AG Color Select Save to Global Swatch

The AG Color Select tool internally rasterized artwork to merge arbitrarily complex blend modes and opacities to a single one. As Illustrator only rasterizes at 8-bits/channel (i.e., integers between 0 and 255), small changes in the sampled color compared to the original can occur. For example, a 70% cyan color would be rasterized with a cyan pixel value of 178, which, when converted back to an Illustrator color, produces a cyan value of 178/255 = 0.69804 or 69.8%. Although this color would not not distinguishable from the original if the document were printed or exported as an image, Illustrator would still see them as different colors (for example, by the Select Same Fill Color function).

For this reason, and because the AG Color Select tool does not work with spot colors, and does not pick up art styles, it should not be viewed as a replacement for the Eyedropper tool. Instead, it complements the native tool when working with live effects, transparent colors, and other situations where the Eyedropper gives an undesirable result.