Comments on: Gradient Bug in Illustrator CS4

By: tom

tom — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:49:48 +0000

Huge thanks, now I have my gradient tool back! The three-finger method did the trick.

By: Claudia

Claudia — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:18:39 +0000

Greg,

Thanks for the update; I appreciate the information (and I’m glad your and your Gradient Controller are feeling better). Just to clarify: doing the three-fingered salute during launch didn’t get rid of the preferences sufficiently to fix this? Did the Adobe tech guy have you just delete the “Adobe Illustrator Prefs” file, or the entire en_US folder?

By: greg

greg — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:17:38 +0000

It was the preferences after all, which is strange as I did a fresh install and problem was still there. I spoke to Adobe and the path to the prefs folder on the mac is users/username/library/preferences/Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings. Dragging those prefs to the desktop (with illustrator closed) did the trick. Those prefs can then be thrown in trash. Thanks again for your help.

By: Claudia

Claudia — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:37:12 +0000

Greg and Jay,

Are you working on multiple monitors? I did some research and discovered that there is a bug with the Gradient controller when the document is displayed on a second monitor. Here’s a quote from the Adobe forums:
“Seems the bug only presents itself if you have your document on a monitor arranged to the right of your main monitor. If your document is on a monitor to the left of the main monitor, things are fine. Things were tested on multiple displays, but this appears to be one of those specific items that slipped through.”

If that’s not your situation, it’s possible that your preferences are corrupt (I can’t find any preference that turns off the gradient controller). However, it’s easy to delete the preferences and start fresh. Try this and let me know if it helps:

On the Mac: Quit Illustrator. Relaunch it, and a microsecond after you relaunch, press and *hold* Command-Option-Shift. Keep holding until the splash screen disappears, and the Welcome screen is displayed. Then (finally) you can release the buttons. This is a one-two punch, so you have to have your fingers poised over those three keys as you launch, so you can press them immediately after Illustrator begins to launch.

On the PC: Same operation as above, but you’ll hold down Control-Alt-Shift.

Once you’ve relaunched Illustrator, create a new file, create an object, and apply a gradient to it. See if the gradient controller now behaves as it should. If it does, then go back into the documents that have been misbehaving, and see if the gradient controller is working. If not, try copying the objects into a new file.

And please let me know if any of this helps!

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:48:04 +0000

Mine appears to have disappeared completely, on everything… It was all good for 6 months or so, but now just behaves like >CS3. Unless i’ve managed to accidently switch something off?!

By: greg

greg — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:10:15 +0000

Hi,

I can’t get the gradient bar to stay visible even after following your directions. Any other clues?