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Is there a way in adobe illustrator to change all same letters to a specific colour, ideally based on a rule.

For example look at the image below:

enter image description here

I'd like to have a "rule" (something like character styles) where by applying it to any text it would change each letter colour as in the rule automatically. An ideally tool should also be case-insensitive and work with different "letter features" such as fonts for example not just colours. In the example image above when the rule is applied, all the letters "A" are turned into green, the letters "C" into yellow and so on.

I tried to look around but I don't think it is possible to do it in illustrator. This answer here is a bit vague and not what I'd like to do.

Thanks!

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  • As far as I'm aware there's nothing that can do that in Illustrator automatically, but maybe you could use GREP in InDesign. Sorry I'm no expert using GREP but I should imagine it would be possible. Commented Apr 5, 2022 at 12:39
  • At a minimum this would need scripting for Illustrator.. but even then I don't know if it's possible. Character Styles, by nature, don't propagate across text and asking a script to OCR type to know what any particular glyph is seems highly unlikely. GREP seems viable as Billy mentioned, but I don't know if you can use GREP in AI scripts. Commented Apr 5, 2022 at 19:35
  • For what it's worth, if you have access to Microsoft Word, it's possible to apply formats (including font colours) to all instances of a particular character (or string of characters). I don't use Illustrator, but if it is able to import (or cut & paste) text from Word whilst honouring the formatting, you might be able to achieve what you need. Commented Apr 5, 2022 at 21:05
  • I haven't used Illustrator for a while. Is it possible to copy formatted text into Illustrator from a web browser? If so, you could apply text colours quite easily with a simple bit of Javascript. Commented Apr 6, 2022 at 12:38
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    @Ni-Ar Is this any use? Commented Apr 6, 2022 at 14:08

1 Answer 1

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In Illustrator v28.6 (Aug 2024), since you have only 4 different letters, first convert all letters to shapes (Object-Expand) and ungroup them (Object-Ungroup); Open the Property tab (Window-Properties); Select one of the 4 letters (say, A) and click "Start Global Edit", this action will automatically select all the objects of similar (in our case, same) shapes; Then you can adjust the stroke/fill colour and opacity for the all selected objects; Repeat the previous step for the rest of unique letters for different combinations; Done.

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  • Hey, thanks for the suggestion. I have adobe illustrator 2020. I don't think I have those features in my version. Commented Aug 22, 2024 at 13:15

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