Illustrator 2026 Eyedropper Leaves Previous Fill Color Hidden in Nested Objects
In Illustrator 2026, the Eyedropper tool sometimes applies the sampled appearance to the selected group/subgroup level instead of replacing the actual appearance of the underlying object.
This creates a dangerous prepress issue: the object visually appears recolored, but the previous fill color remains inside the nested object structure. The old color does not appear as a separate duplicated object when ungrouping. It only becomes visible after entering isolation mode several levels deep. If that internal element/fill is deleted, the entire object disappears, which confirms it is not a duplicate object but the original object retaining its previous appearance.
Expected behavior: the Eyedropper should copy and apply the selected appearance as it did in Illustrator 2025, replacing the object’s actual appearance without leaving the previous color hidden inside nested groups.
Actual behavior: Illustrator 2026 sometimes stacks the new appearance above the object/group while preserving the previous internal fill, causing incorrect color separations and a high risk of production errors in packaging/prepress workflows.
I'm a very experienced user. This started on Illustrator 2026. 2025-2024 were OK.
Marcelo Scasso
shared this idea
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Also — I don’t seem to recognize to recognize the tool panel visible in the top right corner. Look very familiar though... What plugin is this?
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Still not clear what is happening exactly — the Layers panel and especially the Appearance panel aren’t in view. Thus I can’t see what the appearance gets sampled and applied...
But I’d advise to disable both 'Apariencia' options in your Opciones de Cuentagotas dialog and check again. Using these without the Appearance panel is walking in a mine field!Marcelo, can you also share the test file, so I can see what happens exactly there?
Please remove everything that is private in the copy, but make sure the behavior still exists in what’s left.
It’d help me to see if this is truly a bug or not. -
Marcelo Scasso
commented
Sorry I forgot to add the Eyedropper options set. These are the options set by default. I haven't changed them.
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Marcelo Scasso
commented
I added a video with an example.
It also shows when I try to take the color from something gray an it takes a green color.
But the important trouble is that "double" color hidden. -
Marcelo, it’s definitely odd. What are you Eyedropper options set?
Please try to share a test file with an example of an object with a wrongly applied appearance. If you ever catch it happening, please include both a copy of the original object before sampling and the source object you sample the appearance from.
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