How do I get the "combined" color with the eyedropper tool in Illustrator?

Question

I drew a smiley face graphic and used translucent gradient layers on top of the first color to give the face a 3-dimensional look. But there are also "smile lines" under the eyes, and I want to the color in the folds of the lines to blend seamlessly in with the rest of the face.

But using the eyedropper tool only grabs the top layer, of course. Is there a way to set the eyedropper tool to grab the "combined" appearance of all the layers? There doesn't seem to be a way to do it, but I find that incredibly hard to believe.

Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to post the image here, as this is for work. But here's a link to an image that will give you some idea of what I'm talking about.

Answer 1

• Select the object/group
• Choose Edit > Copy (Command/Ctrl+c)
• Choose Edit > Paste in Front (Command/Ctrl+f)
• Choose Object > Rasterize
• Hold the Shift key and use the Eyedropper to click your color
• Hit the Delete key to delete the pasted, rasterized, copy

Copy so you don't actually edit any artwork and then by rasterizing the group/objects you combine the appearance colors. Then the shift key tells the eyedropper to pick up the color on screen not any actual applied fill. Then simply delete the unneeded copy.

Answer 2

I personally just screenshot it and paste it into my artboard, from there just select the color I want.

If you are one the newer releases of Windows 10 you can click ⊞ Win+Shift+S and then you can just select the area you want to copy, it is automatically copied to the clipboard and you can paste straight into Illustrator.

^{▲ This is how I do it all the time.}

Otherwise, just do Alt+Print Screen (usually an abbreviation) which will screenshot only the current window instead of the entire screen(s).

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You can also download a software like Greenshot (free and open-source) which you can preset to automatically just copy to clipboard and this also allows for you to quickly and easily select and area and paste into your artboard.

With Greenshot you can also customize your own keyboard shortcuts etc.