Tinting/Shading Colors in Illustrator

One of the things I find myself doing quite often in Adobe Illustrator is playing with colors. No non-digital artist ever had a palette like this; colors don’t go all over the place, paint doesn’t slop around in places. Truly it’s wonderful.

Color sliders move in tandem and hold the proportion when holding down SHIFT.

Occaisionally, though, I’ll want to darken or lighten the color I’m using. Changing the makeup of the color I’m using is of course very simple with the Color palette–the sliders allow me to change things in a literal flash. But if I just want to tint or shade the color I’ll still want to have the same proportions of CMYK (or RGB) colors.

One can estimate that by the eye, but I’d not suggest it; as powerful good as the Color palette is, it just doesn’t lend itself to such VFR-style maneuvering. I could get out a calculator or use the input box to compute percentages, but that just doesn’t give me the on-the-fly changes I find most useful. Illustrator does provide a solution, though, and it’s mad simple:

• Hold down the SHIFT key on either the Mac or your trusty Windows machine, and
• While keeping that key held down, click on any slider on your Color palette and move it

When you do this, not only will the slider you’re moving move (of course), but all other sliders will move at the same time, in the same direction, in the proportion that you move the slider you’re moving. The effect is to cause the color you’ve so carefully crafted to be merely tinted or shaded, without changing the basic color, which is controlled by the proportions of CMYK or RGB you’re specifiying. Adobe calls it “sliding in tandem”. You might call it a minor bit of genius.

I depend on this little gem. Also I’ve found that, on the Mac platform, holding down the CMD-key before sliding has the same effect.