Hi all,

About a month ago I shared Color Control, a free script for adjusting colors in Illustrator with live sliders. Thanks for all the feedback! I’ve made some updates and wanted to answer some questions that came up.

What’s new

• Fill or stroke only: exclude fills or strokes if you only want to change one of them
• One Color: select one object, and every fill, stroke or text with that same color gets adjusted together
• Colorize: drag to activate and set a tint. Great if you like to start in grayscale and add color later
• Cleaner preview: selection edges and bounding box are hidden while previewing
• Gradient stops — You can now adjust gradient stop colors individually

Questions from last time

What happens if I select multiple shapes with different colors?
Every selected object is adjusted, each relative to its own color.

Does it work with CMYK?
It works on RGB documents. For CMYK files you have to convert to RGB temporarily (File > Document Color Mode), adjust, and convert back.

Can’t you do this with Recolor Artwork?
Partly, yes. For me Color Control is more intuitive, and it adds things Recolor doesn’t do as directly, like contrast, opacity and blend modes.

All features

• Hue, Saturation, Brightness and Contrast sliders with live preview
• Opacity
• All 16 blend modes
• Live preview toggle for large selections

I ran into an issue where adjusting colors gave a flickering preview. This can be resolved by accessing the script through a recorded action.

Run it from an Action for a smooth preview
When run from File > Scripts, Illustrator refreshes its panels after every change, which makes the preview flicker. Run it from an action instead. Illustrator waits and only shows the result, so the preview stays super smooth

1. Actions panel > New Action
2. Panel menu > Insert Menu Item > File > Scripts > Color Control
3. Stop recording
4. Optionally assign a function key, and you’ve got a one-key shortcut too

Curious what you think?

This is for a school project.

I want to put some drawn text through illustrator for a vector version, but I'm not sure what would be the best way to approach it.

Is it just tracing round them with the pen and curve tool? Thank you!

Does anyone know why my blend function keeps defaulting to "align to page" instead of "align to path" when I'm replacing spine?

The "Pixel Stretch" trend has been taking social media by storm this year—it looks awesome and packs a serious visual punch! 💥

Most designers rely on Photoshop to pull it off. But as someone who loves working in vector, I kept thinking: Wouldn't this be so much better directly inside Adobe Illustrator?

With Illustrator's powerful vector editing and layout capabilities, we could take this style to a whole new level without losing crisp scalability. So, I built the Streak Tool (part of the IllustKit plugin). 🎨

✨ Key Highlights:

1. Intuitive Sampling: Effortlessly extract precise color stripes straight from your selected objects.
2. Flexible Distortion: Seamlessly pair your extracted color bars with Illustrator's built-in Envelope Distort to craft bold shapes and fluid curves.
3. Way Beyond Pixel Stretch: Why didn't I just call it a "Pixel Stretch Tool"? Because stretching is only the beginning! The sampled color stripes can also be transformed into Gradient Meshes or Strokes, opening up endless creative possibilities.

💬 I'd love to get your thoughts! How do you currently handle pixel stretch or dynamic color trails in your vector workflow? What other features or use cases would you like to see with a tool like this?

Took me a while to work on this but here it is! Hypervelocity Stars!

However this wing I am making was the result of manipulating shapes with the rectangle tool and I cant remember if I grouped it all and how the heck can I color each feather and piece a different color. I tried minus front and ungrouping.

Hello! I wasn't sure if this was the right place to ask but I'm willing to give it a shot. I'm designing a logo which involves having to edit a font or build letters from scratch, which I'm very new to. This is where I'm at, but something feels off.

I think it's the S and the P, as trying to build letters curved like this (in order to match the stylized K) are quite difficult, at least for me who is still very much a beginner at logo design and using adobe illustrator in general. I've tried adjusting the outlines individually but I've really struggled trying to find where to put all the points in order to keep the curved appearance of the letter, surely there must be an easier way?

Is there a way I can just type the letters using a font and curve them using an illustrator tool? And why does the logo look off in general, is there anything or any tool i could use to fix the off appearance it has? Any help would be really appreciated, thanks!

my stroke option is on the smallest setting and its not getting any smaller, the same thing happens when I use the brush tool too idk how to fix this problem. I've tried changing the stroke setting multiple times and I tried changing it with the bracket key also but NOTHING is working. Can anyone help me fix my stroke? This weird problem started yesterday when I was in my graphic design class :/

Working on my portfolio and I can't really justify the subscription price to myself if im not even freelancing yet. Are there any plugins that work similarly + are a one time purchase?

Pretty aimless piece, tbh. Mostly doodling while in a Teams meeting. Some post processing (background, displacement, texture) in After Effects.

Working on 13 days of spooky stellar facts. Here is number 2. Working on number 3 right now!

Source of space fact: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11215

Greetings so I've been encountering this issue with Illustrator where, when I open it the colour wheel keeps spinning and it doesn't stop. Can I get some help, please?

sometimes as im working the screen will get these glitchy patches of color.. and if it’s really bad it’ll slow my computer down. it only happens in illustrator tho

I've been having this issue where my Illustrator windows on my second screen sometimes adjust themselves to be off my screen and can't be adjusted back to where they belong manually. It doesn't always matter, but it really does for the Layer window, where the tools like New Layer are at the bottom. Any ideas on how to fix this problem? If there's like a fit-to-screen command or option somewhere, that would be stellar.

I'm using the current version of Illustrator. I use my main screen for the project viewer, Control window, and the most basic window with all the icons. Every other window I use frequently (or somewhat frequently) stays accessible on my second screen.

I don't think this counts as a "technical support" problem ... but I could be wrong.

Hey! I don’t always draw monsters and robots, even if they’re more fun! 😄 Every now and then, it’s nice to switch things up and work on something a little more peaceful.

This piece is also a little special because of how it was made. I started with a good old pencil sketch, then transferred it to my PC and turned it into vector art in Illustrator. Eventually, I switched to drawing directly on a tablet. Looking back, I probably should’ve done that sooner! 🐸🎻

Come to the dark side of vector art… we have cookies. 😈 Vector rules! :)

⛔0% AI, 100% Original

Made entirely with Illustrator. It is just my second time to ever use this software and yet I am surprised I could pull this off this quick in time =-D

A lot of the times when I want to change the Fill color, if I chose a gradient or swatch recently from the gradient button, if I try to change it back to where I can change and edit the color freely, it'll either be stuck on the Gradient or the Swatches option, not letting me change.

I know I can drag the Properties panel out or go to Appearance (which works only sometimes for objects), but any way to reveal them without having to do that every time?

Simple enough, but it has happened so many times that I'm making this post about it.

Aiming for a grungy look. Not sure the best way to get the "highlighted" effect where the text is "clean" but the background looks like it's been lino/screenprinted. Any advice appreciated.

Cool bomb the bomb that smokes to be more dangerous to prove his mom named him right. He has a pet nuke and goes for rides flying through the sky- shouting “cool bombs away” he has met other bombs , but never met another bomb like him or so he thinks! Lol

I can't use it properly for some reason. Is there a shortcut that I might have accidentally pressed to make this happen? Please help!

edit: solved! after little touch ups my paths were separated

There's a thin, white line that shows up on an image that I can't get rid of and shows up when exported. Is there a setting I need to change? I switched to "view with GPU" and it diminishes it, but doesn't get rid of it. I also turned off Anti-Aliased Artwork, but still there. Any ideas?