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I was wondering if there is a way in Illustrator to create a certain number of swatches out of a gradient. Say that I need 9 distinct colors and I want to extract these colors from a gradient. What it would return for example is the color at 10%, 20%, 30% etc in the gradient.

Is there a function in Illustrator to do this?

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There's no way of doing it fully automatically in Illustrator, although I suppose it could be scripted if you feel so inclined, but there is a way of doing it with a few extra clicks!

You could add stops to your gradient, using the grid as a guide for placing the stops equidistantly.

Then click on the fill selector, hit the little menu icon in the dropdown, and choose Add Selected Colours

enter image description here

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  • You could also Object\Expand the gradient object's fill to X objects. Then Add Used Colors will give you X swatches. – 13ruce Nov 29 '17 at 15:49
  • @13ruce - no doubt there are several techniques possible, another is rasterizing the gradient filled object, and simply using the eyedropper to sample parts of it. – Billy Kerr Nov 29 '17 at 15:53
  • You can actually do this automatically with an action, rasterize the gradient then mosaic the raster setting then turn selection to swatches. – joojaa Nov 29 '17 at 16:20
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A nice helper tool for calculating gradient color steps outside of Illustrator is chroma.js (eg. https://vis4.net/labs/multihue/#colors=#000000,#FFCCEE,#FFFFEE|steps=9|bez=1|coL=1)

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    I don't know why someone would downvote this excellent answer. Anyhoo, I've given a +1. – Billy Kerr Nov 29 '17 at 15:40
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You could play around with Blend options, which allow you to create gradients between two objects and use a specified number of steps.

It's a two-step process:

  1. Click Object > Blend > Blend Options, then, for Spacing, select Specified Steps, then enter the number of gradient steps you want, then click OK.
  2. Select the two objects you want to create a gradient between, then click Object > Blend > Make.

You can then use Object > Expand and Ungroup to work with each element separately.

Illustrator (2019) Gradients with Blend

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