In this lesson you'll learn how to effectively use the Eyedropper tool in
Illustrator. It's a little bit different compared to Photoshop.
So go ahead and open up pattern.ai example from the support files,
and let's just say we had this pattern here. We wanted this, this, and this and
this all to be saved this color. Well you can double-click this, write down the code,
RGB or you could add to the swatch. That's one way to change but what if you
just want to do a quick change?
Well what you can do is use the Eyedropper tool. So it doesn't pull pixels like it
does in Photoshop or sample a color and a pixel from a photograph. What it does is
it takes the attributes of a shape and applies it to another shape. If we have this
one selected here, go ahead and click one of these yellowish circles here and then select
the Eyedropper tool, and the next one you click on, it's going to apply the attributes back
onto this. So the Fill and the Stroke for example. So, if I click this, now it's
applied it to that. Now if I click this one, then it applies this yellowish color.
This shape is back to this yellow color. So what if you want to do a bunch of
different substitutions, and so first you sample. So let's sample that and then hold
ALT or OPTION and then it makes that the destination shape. So this is always a
destination shape if we first select there. So if I click on this first, then
hold ALT or OPTION, click there, click on this first and then ALT or OPTION there,
I am sampling from source and moving it to destination but this one keeps changing.
How do we fix that? Well, what you can do is just deselect that. So just click
anywhere in the background and then choose the Eyedropper tool again and don't
have anything selected by default. So we'll first sample without anything
pressed on the keyboard and then hold down ALT or OPTION and then click, and
then let go of ALT or OPTION, click and then hold down ALT or OPTION and then click.
So see how the icon changes a little bit from left facing to right facing and it
has nothing in it, and then it does have something in it with a little indicator
of the partially filled eyedropper. So that just means it's turning into a destination icon.
So source, hold down ALT or OPTION, destination. Source, just click without anything,
selected, then destination. So this is not just Fill, like that's what we have it by default.
But let's say I added a Stroke to this, just change the color. I'll make it
a little bit larger so you can see.
Alright, so if you use the Eyedropper tool, click it and then hold down ALT or OPTION, click,
ALT and then ALT or OPTION this so you can actually apply it, do a bunch at once like this,
like so, or you can sample again. So source, destination, source, destination.
So I'm holding ALT or OPTION whenever I want to apply whatever I've sampled by
when I clicked with nothing pressed on the keyboard.
So that's the Eyedropper tool. It's a quick way to move
attributes such as Fill and Stroke from some shapes to another. There's one more tool
under that Eyedropper tool menu. If you go to the Measure tool, that just
measures different areas and the Info panel comes up, so if you click and drag, you'll
see the X&Y coordinates as well as the width and height. If you hold SHIFT, it'll
maintain between 45 degree angles, 0 degree, 90, 180 and so on, so that's if you're
measuring things, it can be useful but of course we can always use the ruler.
If you go to View, Rulers and then Show Rulers. I will see you in the next lesson.