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Sam_Gray
March 9, 2021

Color picker/eyedropper should apply color style

  • March 9, 2021
  • 27 replies
  • 5362 views

When using the color picker, if the object you’re picking from has a color style applied, the color picker doesn’t apply that style to the selected object — it just applies the hex value (or whatever color model you have set) of the pixel you click. This can lead to messy colors not adhering to your style guide.

Instead, the color picker should apply the color style of the clicked object if it has one. (You could click the stroke to apply the stroke’s color style, or the fill to apply the fill’s color style.)

If you do want to be able to pick the pixel color instead of the style, there could be an additional modifier key to hold while clicking.

With the current functionality, if you want to apply the same color style to another object, you first have to click the already-styled object to see what style is applied (assuming you may have multiple similar shades and can’t eyeball it), then click the object you want to style, and then find that color style in the list and apply it. The proposed workflow would be: click the object you want to style, press Ctrl-C, click the already-styled object.

Illustrator works this way — “global” colors (equivalent to color styles) are applied when an object styled with one is clicked with the eyedropper tool.

27 replies

Ryan_Brown1
New Participant
September 2, 2024

Co-sign on this. Should be able to eyedrop either style or pixel color. Maybe you hold shift while you click the eyedropper on your target style

Jesper1
September 25, 2024

Came to the forum to suggest this - voting on this! 🙂

Could be eye dropping style by pressing shift or something while clicking.

Matthijs_Rouw
New Participant
October 29, 2024

Having issues picking colors quickly as well.

We go through the hassle of creating design systems with (color) variables and tokens and once applied to an existing shape and picked after drawing a new shape, it picks the colour, not the token.

Each time you create a new shape to which you want to apply one of the existing colors in your page, makes you pull up the variables options instead - ugh

deb2
New Member
November 4, 2024

This would be a huge efficiency win. Its not just about being consistent when swapping out one color for another. I’m over here repeating the same library search 3 or 4 times when I want to consolidate multiple colors and turn them all into the same style. (why do I have so many colors? cuz random rogue hex codes keep proliferating when sampling!)

I thought I just hadn’t learned some cool shortcut, went searching, and now I find a several-year old thread 😦 If print design tools have attribute-based style sampling, a web tool should surely have this.

Jamie_Schmid
December 16, 2024

I kind of can’t believe this hasn’t been implemented, for font settings especially, and that this thread is 4 years old. This issue comes up for me OVER AND OVER. You can’t assume that everyone is going to have a perfectly formed style/tokenization in place.

pcy
New Member
January 24, 2025

For everyone still looking for this, Figma supports this behavior for colors and other styles. When you open the eye dropper, hold shift and it will select the style instead of the raw value.

 

You can use the eyedropper tool to sample a color variable or style and apply it to a selected layer.

  1. Select the layer you want to edit.
  2. Toggle the eyedropper tool, then hover over a pixel containing a color variable or color style.
  3. While holding ⇧ Shift, click on the layer to apply the variable or style to the selected layer.

 

https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/27643269375767-Sample-colors-with-the-eyedropper-tool#h_01JCHCDMG64YWNMMNBJ15EY2J3

Amichai_Oron
New Participant
March 5, 2025

This feature is already programmed in Figma just needs to be rewired to the color picker it’s basically a copy properties , paste properties  function - please transfer this functionality to the eye dropper and ad a modifier key to select value only