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Eyedropper picks wrong CMYK colors from image's RGB preview in CMYK document

I observe that AI's eyedropper picks color not directly from a raster image, but from it's preview, but I think it's terribly wrong, especially when you pick a color from a CMYK image placed inside of a CMYK document, and get some mutated color instead of ground truth.

For example, I have a photo blended into a single colored background and I don't remember which one exactly. I pick this color with the eyedropper inside AI to match the image’s edge with the vector background ...and it almost looks OK, but when it's printed, the mismatch is quite visible.

Other people, whose designs I dissect quite often, seem to forget or more likely don't know about AI picking colors (because it's not natural), and if I don't find it, I got all the blame.

29 votes
AdminEgor Chistyakov (Admin, Adobe Illustrator) shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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  • AdminEgor Chistyakov (Admin, Adobe Illustrator) commented  ·   ·  Report

    Ton, you might be correct with the assumption...
    I tried to rasterize a rectangle with fractions in CMYK color (55.69) and opened the image in Photoshop — and got integers, 56...
    But then I mix the very same color in Ps, making integers manually, fill half of the image with this new color and try to pick colors from this image in Ai: Ai still picks the original 55.69 from the original half of the image... and 56.08 from the half I flooded with Ps’s 56!
    And Ps SEES them as different color when Color Picker is used, displaying different Lab, RGB, HSB values, but CMYK stays the same, rounded.

    In my experiment below I did a similar thing: created these in Ai first (but no fractions), rasterized it, used to make a composition and placed back into Ai.
    Double conversion and forcing integers (visually) would explain it.

    So Ai is rather precise... but the irritation stays.
    Now the question would be — what to do with the uncomfortable truth? 'Fighting ignorance' is my favorite choice, but...

  • Ton commented  ·   ·  Report

    Or is it Photoshop that is rounding numbers? If I rasterize the placed file that gives the fractions in Illustrator and export that file from Illustrator as .tif, Photoshop will show the same rounded numbers it started with. Photoshop will not allow fractions and force round numbers when you try to enter percentages like 69,8%. CMYK values go from 0-100 while image values have a range from 0-255.

  • AdminEgor Chistyakov (Admin, Adobe Illustrator) commented  ·   ·  Report

    Here is an example.
    I have a CMYK document, and it has a linked image in it, with an intentionally chosen profile., with some specific colors set for the background, and these have to be the part of the background, because of blending modes used.
    No I need to grab those colors form the clear parts of the background to quickly transfer them into vector part of the design. But when I try — Ai lies about values.

    Instead of
    70-15-0-0
    0-35-85-0
    0-95-20-0
    I get
    69.8-14.9-0-0
    0-34.9-85.1-0
    0-94.9-20-0

    Not much, right? Just 0.2%, why are you mad?
    But these would be enough to break Select Same Fill later, duplicate swatches if added next to existing ones in other documents, drop my trust level for the tool and force me cleaning this mess in the time I need I can’t spend. Sure, there are methods to help with this, but it’s not MY error. It’s Ai’s lie.

    (Edited by admin)
  • Ton commented  ·   ·  Report

    The eyedropper could always pick the right color when the image was embedded. Now the eyedropper picks the right color because... it silently embeds the linked image when clicking the image with the eyedropper.

  • Ton commented  ·   ·  Report

    Same problem, I would suggest to merge them.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    If you have two same images. one is linked and one is embedded and you use eye dropper to same area of each.. the colour it picks will be different.. this should be fixed

  • Simon Bowland commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi Ankit - I reported this issue myself back in November 2020. Sent test files and a video of the problem to Rama but he was unable to reproduce. To get an accurate colour pick, I have to open the raster image in Photoshop, use the colour picker in Photoshop, note down the CMYK reference, and then create that colour manually in Illustrator.

  • Darryn Rogers commented  ·   ·  Report

    Sampling a colour in a bitmap placed in Illustrator does not sample the correct colour value if the bitmap is placed using the "Link" option.

    If the bitmap is placed with the "Link" option switched off ie embedded the the colours are sampled correctly.

    I have attached a reference image which shows a placed, linked file in an Illustrator document. The squares at the bottom are colours created in Photoshop with their colour values indicated. The circles at the top are vector objects in illustrator with the colour values as the eyedropper tool sampled them.

    Windows 10
    Illustrator 2020

  • Darryn Rogers commented  ·   ·  Report

    Sampling a colour in a bitmap placed in Illustrator does not sample the correct colour value if the bitmap is placed using the "Link" option.

    If the bitmap is placed with the "Link" option switched off ie embedded the the colours are sampled correctly.

    I have attached a reference image which shows a placed, linked file in an Illustrator document. The squares at the bottom are colours created in Photoshop with their colour values indicated. The circles at the top are vector objects in illustrator with the colour values as the eyedropper tool sampled them.

    Windows 10
    Illustrator 2020

  • Barak Vinner commented  ·   ·  Report

    When sampling color from placed bitmap image in illu, it samples different values the the values in the original file.

    That way if I have a picture with dark black background and I want to place it on a larger canvas with text, I can't sample the black and create a larger vector shape as background. If I do sample it, the print will show a difference in color and will not be approved (or worse will be printed like that)

    Support said I should open the file instead of placing it, but what should I do if I want to place 6 images in one A4? open them all and copy paste each one?

    Please resolve accuracy of the eyedropper.

    Thank you :)
    Barak Vinner
    SpectX 3D & design studio

  • AdminEgor Chistyakov (Admin, Adobe Illustrator) commented  ·   ·  Report

    Ton, hello! I don't care about screen representation as user. I know my image has different colors and I want THEM, not colors from preview which exists in inner AI world. I want 0-65-100-0 instead of 12,01-67,93-100-2,45. I don't need dirty channels in bright orange. It all turns to money when prints got rejected.
    And I won't embed 80-250Mb image which I still edit and therefore want to be linked, just to make broken tool work.

  • Ton commented  ·   ·  Report

    Embed the image and the eyedropper picks up the values from the image.
    When the image is linked Illustrator picks the values from your monitor screen representation.

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