Group vector points for easy gradient mesh color control

I'm working with some gradient mesh shapes, and am finding it a pain to have to individually select the points in the middle of the shape to select their color, and then deselect them when I want to change the points on the outside.
I've tried grouping when the appropriate points selected, but doesn't seem to stick. Is there a better workflow method to keep adjusting the color of gradient meshes?
Thank you!

With the points you want to be able to re-select selected, go to the select menu -> save selection. Then you can get to that selection at the bottom of the selection menu.

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Gradient Mesh- Coloring individual points

I'm trying to practice on myself using the gradient mesh tool… I understand the point made about making many smaller meshes e.g. eyes, nose, mouth…
I'll start from the beginning…
I open an image of myself >open the layers panel and lock my image…
Create a new blank layer…
Then I select my pen tool…
Start making an outline of my face, approximately 1-3 pixels all the way around the outside…
Then I go up to the menu bar and click on, "Object >Create Gradient Mesh" - 15 rows by 15 columns…
then I use the selection tool and select the whole mesh that was just created…
then set the opacity to 0%…
Using the direct selection tool to select & move anchor points and handles as needed to match light lines…
then I use the mesh tool to select an anchor point to start coloring…
this is where I start to run into trouble…
after selecting my first anchor point to color, I select the color picker tool from the toolbox…
for some reason I'm not able to select that color beneath the mesh (the color underneath the selected anchor point)…
I played around & so far the only way I'm able to select the color beneath is by moving the whole mesh to the side, but… I end up losing the reference point of where that anchor was…
Illustrator CS6
Any help, tips and tricks would be greatly appreciated…
Thank you in advance,
Rob

I ended up watching a video with no sound at YouTube…
What the person did was/sound similar to what you're telling me…
Lock the image layer and create a new layer >used the square tool >added points and move them where needed >while holding down the control key this person clicked on the eyeball of layer 2…
I don't know if your way has the same effect, but… This worked perfectly for me, holding down the control button while clicking on the eyeball…
I'm now able to select the color underneath the anchor points…

[CS4] Gradient Mesh- uneditable "helper" points

How do I delete the extra points that appear along a path when using the Gradient Mesh tool?
If you create an organic shaped object then convert it to a gradient mesh you get a cross pattern with handles at the mesh points. Adding more paths creates more paths. But sometimes these paths have invisible helper points which cause kinks when you try to edit the line. They try to maintain their original shape when the path is moved via the mesh point handles. Anyone who's worked with gradient meshes knows this. By deleting these extra points, the line becomes smooth and workable. It's absolutely essential for example when an additional line is added with the gradient mesh tool and the line takes a shortcut extending it beyond the parameters of the artwork. By deleting the points, the line can be edited and guided back inside the artwork's edges.
To see these extra points, press the + or - key while the mesh object is selected.
Previous versions of Illustrator allowed these extra points to be deleted. In CS you merely had to click the - key to change the pen tool to the delete pen tool. Clicking the points was identical to removing anchor points. Simple, easy and absolutely necessary.
In CS3 the minus-pen tool stopped working until after many hours of searching on the internet I found that by unchecking the "Snap to Point" in the preferences, made it work again.
I make my living by illustrating. The gradient mesh tool is a huge part of what I do. Without the ability to edit these points the tool is useless.
I hope they are still editable or I'll have to go back to CS3.
Thank you.
BD

StrongBeaver wrote:
Using the remove points pen tool does not work for me on gradient mesh points. The gradient mesh adds vertical or horizontal lines I want to remove either a point or an entire line.
rcraighead - Already tried your suggestion before asking, didn't work.
Use the direct select tool to select the anchor point you wish to delete then hit delete. The mesh will be deselected after you hit delete so you have to reselect it and you will see that the anchor point and mesh line associated with it are gone.
Ray-
The need to deselect the snap to point option in the preferences persists for CS 5 *** well.
this is how the direct select to and the delete key work out.
If you want just one line you have to select the point that intersects with the outer path.

Gradient Mesh Tool won't work over a standard gradient

How can I get the Mesh Tool to work over a gradient? If I place an RGB image and create a gradient mesh over it I can select each individual point and then use the color picker to pick a color underneath by clicking the placed image. However, if I create a gradient mesh over a standard gradient I can not pick up the color in the standard gradient that is below. What the color picker does is pick up the entire gradient. It doesn't put any color into the individual points of the gradient mesh.

Thanks guys for the answers. I appreciate it. I did determine that I could rasterize the gradient so it would be treated like a placed image. That breaks the vector attributes but it does work.
I swear that I tried all the modifier keys (ctrl, shift, alt, ctrl+shift, etc.) but I guess not. I was crunching out a job at 4AM and I guess I missed something. I do usually try all of them before I look for other options. I thought that I might have overlooked a switch or preference. But I couldn't find one. Using "shift" does in fact work well. Thanks for redirecting me back to the most simple solution.
It always amazes me how the mind works, although frustratingly. I bet that I tried "shift" and maybe missed the key (I don't look at the keyboard most of the time as I do it by feel) or I didn't push it all the way down. Whatever the malfunction, once my brain thought that I'd tried the "shift" key I never went back and tried it again. It just goes to show you, you need to try each potential solution several times before moving on.
Thanks for the answers. It has me rolling again and having a great time exploring the world of the gradient mesh.

Gradient mesh dying, CS 6 gradient stroke gonna take over?

Hi just wondering,
I had a look at the CS6 sneak peek video and thought to myself will there be any use for a gradient mesh now since you can use a gradient stroke to fill in colors to the contours of a shape?
Anyone played around with it enough to tell me what would be the major disadvantage or advantage between a gradient mesh vs a gradient stroke?

Can't do anythign close to this with a gradient stroke or gradient fill.
I think, if anything, they may elimiante the need for blends a bit and provide better options for some situations. With a gradient stroke you can easily blend two flat colors to each other simply via the stroke.
And it does make directional cradients a snap with the "along" setting.
And you can somewhat fake conical gradients with a thick stroke.

Joining Gradient Mesh Paths

I'd like to know if I can join these two points on this gradient mesh ?

Endpoint has a very specific meaning in Illustrator, and it is something that does not occur in a mesh. In fact, there are no "mesh paths": meshes and paths are different things. Confusingly, they both have anchor points, but mesh anchor points and path anchor points do not have identical behavior. Pathfinders (and Shape Modes) work on paths, but not on meshes.
Peter

Can i save a vector with gradient mesh as isolated .PNG?

Hi,
Can i save a vector with gradient mesh as isolated .PNG?
It has some effects, so if i'm taking it out from the blue background it becomes darker.
Any advice? I need it isolated png for using it in an iOS app.
Many thanks

I am using Illustrator CS6, on Mac.
I can't copy and paste the "cloud" into a new document to save it, because it looses the effect of those filters (since the background is no longer behind it).
Sorry if im not explaining it right, i'm a beginner in illustrator. Can i group both the "cloud" and the blue background, to get just one shape: the realistic white cloud?
P.S: i can make a link with the .esp file of the clouds, if it helps.

Gradient mesh transparency problem when saving for web

Hi,
I created a shadow using a gradient mesh but I can't seem to figure out how to set the mesh points to multiply. As a result, when I do save for web, the white parts get saved as opaqe areas and the shadow png can't be placed on a colored background. Help.

...and aside from what Monika said, consider the limitations of transparency handling in web image formats as well as what impact the differences in handling of transparancies between browsers may have on the web site design.
Mylenium

Autofill gradient mesh points

Hello everyone. I'm working on a school assignment with the gradient mesh (portrait of our face), great tool and all, but I'm getting tired of clicking a point then switching to the eyedropper and filling it with the color near by. Is there any way to select a whole bunch of points and then click something that fills each point with the color right underneath it?
Thanks!

I ended up watching a video with no sound at YouTube…
What the person did was/sound similar to what you're telling me…
Lock the image layer and create a new layer >used the square tool >added points and move them where needed >while holding down the control key this person clicked on the eyeball of layer 2…
I don't know if your way has the same effect, but… This worked perfectly for me, holding down the control button while clicking on the eyeball…
I'm now able to select the color underneath the anchor points…

How to pick automatic colors in gradient mesh?

Hi, first, sorry a bad english;.
I can pick automatic colors for points in gradient mesh?
How to make? My mesh have much points and need a long time to color one by one.
I think, all understand-me, thanks;

You've got an awful lot of points there.
Rule#1: work with as small number of points as possible. Often it's better to split the artwork into several meshes. In this case: extra mouth, extra eyes for instance.
There's no automatic way of coloring meshes. Take the lasso tool to select more than one point, but that's about it.

Swapping out colors in gradient mesh

Hi everyone,
I have a gradient mesh and I used a single pantone color to shade it, ie. with different tints of the one colour.
I want to see what it looks like in a different pantone color and wondered if there was a way to swap out the original color for a new one and keep the different percentages at the same time.
Any advice much appreciated.

I would do this a much different way.
I would select the gradient mesh object
go to Edit>Edit Color>Recolor Art
then select the icon right center to create a color group from the art.
Then select the change color icon next to color you want to change
then at the bottom center there is a pull down from an icon that looks like swatches and select a library from which to choose you swatch.
The select the swatch you want and the color will be updated at the same tint value, although have other options as far as how it updates color.

Hello. I am trying to change the colors on my ical. I have been able to select a calendar group, click "get info" and then "other" in the color options and which point a a lot of color options are available. HOWEVER, I can't seem to select the color.

Hello. I am trying to change the colors on my ical. I have been able to select a calendar group, click "get info" and then "other" in the color options and which point a a lot of color options are available. HOWEVER, I can't seem to select the color. I click on a new color and press enter and nothing happens...not sure what I am doing wrong.

What do you currently see?
Can you attach a screenshot?
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem
Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot.
Do you have the menu bar?
*Press the F10 key or tap the Alt key to bring up the hidden Menu bar.
Do you have any toolbars visible at all?
Start Firefox in <u>[[Safe Mode|Safe Mode]]</u> to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).
*Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window.
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Safe+Mode
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes
Make sure that you do not run Firefox in full screen mode (press F11 or Fn + F11 to toggle; Mac: Command+Shift+F).
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-to-use-full-screen
You can check for problems caused by a corrupted localstore.rdf file.
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Corrupt_localstore.rdf

Gradient Mesh - distorted segments with no anchor points

I often run into very strange behaviour with the Gradient Mesh tool, where a line segment becomes heavily warped (kinked, looped or with a hard angle in it) that has no anchor points or control handles to account for the distorted line segment. I've only seen this happen with the Gradient Mesh tool. In my most recent occurrence of this issue I have what should be a gently curved segment between two flat control points, and instead there's this massive "kink" in it that has a hard angle and nearly a loop that has nothing at all to do with the anchor points. There are no anchor points in-between these two (I started with a rectangle and just started adding and manipiulating points).
Anyone else know what I'm talking about and have a workaround or solution? Or even an explanation of why this occurs might make me less frustrated.
t

Thanks for the response, Mike. I checked the surrounding points as a matter of first-line diagnosis, and nothing explains this distortion.
In the image above you can see a "hump" which is not accounted for by any of the handles. The position of both control handles on each side of the segment would indicate a concave segment. The anterior handle of the circled point surprisingly has no effect whatsoever on the segment it is attached to - it is unclear to me what segment it is then controlling.

Thoughts on automation for gradient mesh illustrations....

So I've been looking around at various tutorials on creating gradient mesh illustrations. The general theme that keeps popping up is how time consuming it is to colourize the mesh, point by point. Some clever programmer out there could surely find some way of automating this process no?
The way I see this potentially working would be to initiate a filter of some kind that would take a selected object, in this case a gradient mesh, collect all of the x/y coordinates of all of the points into an array. Then, using that array of points, one by one, determining what the visible CMYK values are of the pixel that is below and then setting that point to said colour. Sure, the user would likely have to go back and adjust some points manually here and there where a point is on the edge of a fold between a light and dark area - but I have to think that the bulk of the points would be visually correct on the first pass.
This can't possibly be an insurmountable task? Clearly well beyond my skills but if such a thing could be created it would drastically speed up the illustration process associated with this tool.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
Jeff

...and aside from what Monika said, consider the limitations of transparency handling in web image formats as well as what impact the differences in handling of transparancies between browsers may have on the web site design.
Mylenium

Multi color gradient for touch and selected color of spark mobile list

multi color gradient for touch and selected color of spark mobile list
how to get dat?

or how about a bitmap as the background for the touch and selected color for the items in a list.

Group vector points for easy gradient mesh color control

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