: How to change colour of all elements of a group, at once, in Illustrator I have a group of objects of the same colour, consisting of compound paths, regular paths and groups of these. How

@Karen819

Use the "Magic Wand Tool".

Then, click on a object and now you can change at once all seleceted objects in that color you have selected.

After than you should create a swatch - it's easier to change the color later again.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Heady304

The problem of not being able to colour all objects after 'traditional' 'select all' operation appears when the group has it's own appearance attribute (in appearance panel). It is because a group had applied a fill attribute to it, which was receiving all colour changes when whole group was selected, and this fill attribute was placed in Appearance pane BELOW the group contents. You can see in in the example below:



There are several ways of colouring all the objects at once:


[Also suggested by @Lollero in the comment to his answer] Use the Direct Selection Tool (the white arrow) to select all the member objects and change the colour. If there is something below your group, double click it to enter the Isolation Mode and then do the selection. Works for groups with fill attribute above contents only if all objects are selected,
Using appearance attributes. In case of my group I could see the fill colour in the Appearance Panel and I could change the fill colour, but it didn't change the colour of the sub-objects. I realised that there were three "layers/attributes" in this panel in the following order: 1. Stroke, 2. Contents, 3. Fill. What did help was to move Fill attribute above contents "layer/attribute". The other object I didn't have problems with didn't have those Stroke and Fill attributes (what was reflected in an empty circle next to it's name in Layers panel. My 'troublemaker' had this circle filled).
Avoiding appearance attributes. What also helped was to remove the abovementioned appearance atrributes by pressing Clear Appearance button at the bottom of Appearance Panel, and then pick a colour from the source object while holding Shift key, or apply new colour or swatch directly. Picking colour with Eyedropper without holding shift will add appearance attributes to the group and move the Fill below contents.
There is also @Scott 's mentioned powerful technique of using "Recolor Artwork" function. Please see Scott's answer.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Nimeshi706

Use Live Color (Recolor Artwork) if you have Illustrator CS4 or newer.

Select all the objects, then choose Edit > Edit Color > Recolor Artwork.

With the Assign Tab highlighted, select 1 under the color menu at the top center of the window.

Double-click the little color box on the right and set a new color.

Click OK.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Ogunnowo857

Go to the Swatches window ( Top menu: Window > Swatches ).
Add a new swatch color and make sure that you have "Global" checked.
Then apply that swatch to multiple objects by selecting them and clicking the swatch.
Later if you want to change that color, go to the Swatches window
again and change that swatch color through the swatch options ( Double clicking the swatch will get you there. ). After changing the color, it will change in all the objects that you have applied it to.


When you select an object, the swatch that is used in it will get selected in the swatches window, that's how you know which one to fiddle with.



Here's a tutorial on this:
www.dreaminfinity.com/nocturne/tutorials/illustrator-tutorials/global-color-swatches/


Other tips:


Direct selection tool can go inside groups to select individual
objects. Doesn't work in all cases.
If you put objects into a layer, you can select all of those layers by clicking the circle on the right side of a layer. It doesn't care if they are in a group or not, they will get selected.

Vote Up Vote Down