Live Paint groups

Converting your artwork to Live Paint groups allows you to color them freely, as you would a drawing on canvas or paper. You can stroke each path segment with a different color and fill each enclosed path (note, not just closed paths) with a different color, pattern, or gradient.

Live Paint is an intuitive way to create colored drawings. It lets you use the full range of Illustrator’s vector drawing tools, but treats all the paths you draw as though they are on the same flat surface. That is, none of the paths is behind or in front of any other. Instead, the paths divide the drawing surface up into areas, any of which can be colored, regardless of whether the area is bounded by a single path or by segments of multiple paths. The result is that painting objects is like filling in a coloring book or using watercolors to paint a pencil sketch.

Once you’ve made a Live Paint group, each path remains fully editable. When you move or adjust a path’s shape, the colors that had been previously applied don’t just stay where they were, like they do in natural media paintings or image editing programs. Instead, Illustrator automatically reapplies them to the new regions that are formed by the edited paths.

The paintable parts of Live Paint groups are called edges and faces. An edge is the portion of a path between where it intersects with other paths. A face is the area enclosed by one or more edges. You can stroke edges and fill faces.

Take, for example, a circle with a line drawn across it. As a Live Paint group, the line (edge) dividing the circle creates two faces in the circle. You can fill each face and stroke each edge with a different color using the Live Paint Bucket tool.

Live Paint limitations

Fill and paint attributes are attached to faces and edges of a Live Paint group—not to the actual paths that define them, as in other Illustrator objects. Because of this, some features and commands either work differently or are not applicable to paths inside a Live Paint group.

Features and commands that work on an entire Live Paint group, but not on individual faces and edges

• Transparency

• Effects

• Multiple fills and strokes from the Appearance panel

• Object > Envelope Distort

• Object > Hide

• Object > Rasterize

• Object > Slice > Make

• Make Opacity Mask (in the Transparency panel menu)

• Brushes (You can apply brushes to an entire Live Paint group if you add a new stroke to the group using the Appearance panel.)

Features that don’t work on Live Paint groups

• Gradient meshes

• Graphs

• Symbols from the Symbols panel

• Flares

• Align Stroke options from the Stroke panel

• The Magic Wand tool

Object commands that don’t work on Live Paint groups

• Outline Stroke

• Expand (You can use the Object > Live Paint > Expand command instead.)

• Blend

• Slice

• Clipping Mask > Make

• Create Gradient Mesh

Other commands that don’t work on Live Paint groups

• Pathfinder commands

• File > Place

• View > Guides > Make

• Select > Same >Blending Mode, Fill & Stroke, Opacity, Style, Symbol Instance, or Link Block Series

• Object > Text Wrap > Make

Create Live Paint groups

When you want to color objects using different colors for each edge, or intersection, convert the artwork into a Live Paint Group.

Certain types of objects, such as type, bitmap images, and brushes, cannot be directly made into Live Paint groups. You first need to convert these objects into paths. For example, if you try to convert an object that uses brushes or effects, the complex visual appearance is lost in the conversion to Live Paint. However, you can retain much of the appearance by first converting the objects to regular paths and then converting the resulting paths to Live Paint.

Note: When you convert artwork to a Live Paint group, you cannot return the artwork to its original state. You can expand the group into its individual components, or release the group back to its original paths with no fill and a .5 black stroke.

Create a Live Paint group

Convert objects to Live Paint groups

Expand or release a Live Paint group

Releasing a Live Paint group changes it to one or more ordinary paths with no fill and a .5‑point black stroke. Expanding a Live Paint group changes it to one or more ordinary paths that are visually similar to the Live Paint group, but are now separate filled and stroked paths. You can use the Group Selection tool to select and modify these paths separately.

Select items in Live Paint groups

Use the Live Paint Selection tool  to select individual faces and edges in a Live Paint group. Use the Selection tool  to select the entire Live Paint group, and the Direct Selection tool  to select paths inside a Live Paint group. When you’re working in a complex document, you can isolate a Live Paint group so that it is easy to select the exact face or edge you want.

Select faces and edges

The Live Paint Selection tool pointer changes to the face pointer  when it’s positioned over a face, the edge pointer  when it’s positioned over an edge, or the x pointer  when it’s positioned outside of a Live Paint group.

Select a Live Paint group

Select an original path within a Live Paint group

Isolate a Live Paint group from the rest of the artwork

Modify Live Paint groups

When you modify a path in a Live Paint group, Illustrator colors the modified or new faces and edges using fills and strokes from the existing group. If the results are not what you expect, you can reapply the colors you want using the Live Paint Bucket tool.

When you delete edges, the fill floods across any newly expanded face. For example, if you delete a path that divides a circle in half, the circle is filled with one of the fills previously in the circle. You can sometimes help guide the results. For instance, before deleting a path that divides a circle, first move it so that the fill you want to keep is larger than the fill you want to remove.

Add paths to a Live Paint group

As you add more paths to the Live Paint group, you can fill and stroke the new faces and edges that are created.

Resize an individual object or path

Paint with the Live Paint Bucket tool

The Live Paint Bucket tool lets you paint faces and edges of Live Paint groups with the current fill and stroke attributes. The tool pointer displays as either one or three color squares, which represent the selected fill or stroke color and, if you’re using colors from a swatch library, the two colors adjacent to the selected color in the library. You can access the adjacent colors, as well as the colors next to those, and so on, by pressing the left or right arrow key.

Live Paint Bucket options

The Live Paint Bucket options let you specify how the Live Paint Bucket tool works, choosing whether to paint just fills, just strokes, or both, as well as how to highlight faces and edges as you move the tool over them. You can see these options by double-clicking the Live Paint Bucket tool.

Paints the faces of Live Paint groups.

Paints the edges of Live Paint groups.

Displays when you choose a color from the Swatches panel. The Live Paint Bucket tool pointer appears as three color swatches: the selected fill or stroke color plus the color directly to the left and right of it in the Swatches panel.

Outlines the face or edge the cursor is currently over. Faces are highlighted with a thick line and edges are highlighted with a thin line.

Sets the color for the highlight. You can choose a color from the menu or click the paint swatch to specify a custom color.

Specifies how thick to make the highlight.

Close gaps in Live Paint groups

Gaps are small spaces between paths. If paint leaks through and paints faces you did not intend, you probably have a gap in your artwork. You can create a new path that closes the gap, edit existing paths to close the gap, or adjust the gap options in the Live Paint group.

Highlight gaps in a Live Paint group

This command highlights any gaps found on the currently selected Live Paint group, based on your gap options settings for that group.

Set Live Paint gap options

Gap rules for merged Live Paint groups

When you merge Live Paint groups that have different gap settings, Illustrator uses the following rules to handle the gaps:

• If gap detection is off in all groups in the selection, gaps are closed and gap detection is turned on with Paint Stops At set to Small Gaps.

• If gap detection is on and the same for all groups in the selection, gaps are closed and the gap setting is preserved.

• If gap detection is mixed for the selection, gaps are closed and the gap settings of the bottommost Live Paint group are preserved (if gap detection is on for that group). If the bottommost group has gap detection turned off, gap detection is turned on and Paint Stops At is set to Small Gaps.