Color picking for gradients, shortcuts,

[CurranJSmith]

I cant seem to color pick easily via short cuts when I am trying to color for a Gradient. For example. I have my colors layed out in shapes on the side on my artboard. Normally, for regular fills, I can hit the "i" key for "color pick" and click on the color in wont, applying it directly to the fill of the object I have previously selected. However,, I would like this process to work the same when I and picking multiple colors for Gradients. 

It is not a smooth and easy process to get all my different gradients to match which is why the color pick is great for this. Unfortunately it is still pretty damn slow because i need to manually mouse over and click the color picker, then click the color, then click again to apply to my gradient. Hit "i" and clicking my color, automatically exits my gradient and fills the object as a plain color. please fix this or provide a work around to make the process smoother. 

[2ddpainter]

Isnt the swatches panel not useful to transfer your colors to a gradient ?

All colors of the Documen are listet in the top of the Swatches panel
"Recent list". So its possible to transfer them from there into a gradient.

On the other hand, you could also create a palette from the document colors,
also from Images, in the Swatches menu and use this palette then for your gradients.
Swatches menu > Create palette from document

 

[fde101]

The "recent list" of swatches only holds a limited number of colors, so to say it lists "all" the colors of the document suggests that the document only has a small number of colors, which may or may not be the case.

The "create palette from document" option is a better way to get started with an existing document, then you could maintain the swatches from there, which is obviously a better approach than having objects in the borders of the document to act as pseudo-swatches, partially duplicating the functionality that the swatches panel already provides, including working directly with gradient stops when editing them with the fill tool.

If you really need to use a picker with the fill tool for some reason (perhaps a one-off color grab from something that you do not have a swatch for), you can drag the eyedropper on the Color panel to grab the color into the small swatch immediately next to that eyedropper, then apply the color to your gradient from there.  You could alternatively use the color picker tool you have been using to load a color into the colors panel, then use the buttons which appear on the swatches panel when you have a user-created palette selected to add that color as a swatch, from which you can easily apply it to one or more gradients using the fill tool.