Color palette overrides fill colors and color modes in Illustrator 2018
Hi, I am a design professor and most students in my class experienced a specific problem when we were doing an exercise to learn how to apply the correct color palettes to different logo files. Specifically, we created fictional identity designs as a means to learn how to create a production-ready bundle of files (a logo with versions in b&w, spot color (Pantone), 4-color process, and RGB). Almost 100% of my 18 students had their 4-color process file -- which was filled with CMYK colors upon designing, and should have stayed CMYK -- show up as being filled with RGB when opened after having been closed.
Through testing this unusual pattern of error across all of their files, it appears that Adobe Illustrator will choose to show colors in the color palette that was last opened within the application, and if the palette isn't the same as the fill colors, it creates a color translation of what the color should be into what it want to show you. Stated another way, the students had trouble getting the color palette to hold the color information they entered (percentages/values of either CMYK or RGB, in particular). Regardless of what they had entered, a computer with one or the other of these color palettes open would override their settings. Unacceptable. In one case, I also witnessed a student manually enter RGB values, only to deselect the item, select the object again, and then find different RGB values in place than those I watched him enter. In 19 years of teaching, I've never seen this problem be so widespread across student files.
For what it's worth, the Pantone palette behaved. The problem specifically is between RGB and CYMK colors/color palettes. PLEASE FIX THIS. This will cause major problems in real projects that rely upon color mode accuracy. Please contact me with information about the problem and/or solution. We would appreciate a follow-up.
Julie Mader-Meersman
shared this idea
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Jackie
commented
I also have a similar issue. I set the color to a specific color. I click off of the object and then click back into it, it slightly changes the shade of the color. It's so subtle you don't notice it until the file is printed. I've been trying to fix it for weeks and nothing seems to work.
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colleen costello
commented
I am having a similar problem. I can see a swatch that is distinctly one color, but when I try to make an object that same color it is translated to a very different shade. Incredibly frustrating as I am working on a brand identity. I need to know how to fix this!!
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Keely
commented
This sounds like what is happening to me as well. I'm just learning and practicing making colour palettes. When I set the fill colour of an object to a pure hue, or any colour really, the next time I open the colour picker for that object, the cursor in the colour picker has been moved somewhere towards the middle of the box, where it is duller and sometimes not at all the colour I originally made it. This is separate from when a colour is outside the gamut. Very frustrating.
I have scanned forums and online discussions, but not finding any fixes yet. Seems to be quite widespread. -
Dianne
commented
Just spent three hours trying to figure this out....so frustrating! Even though the graphic file shows I've switched to CMYK the only option I have to choose from for the fill is RGB or K.
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P Lindner
commented
I agree. i'm trying to set up artwork for litho (ie cmyk). I have to ensure a logo always prints 25% black but I can't stop it converting into a 4 colour rendition of the grey when I paste it into a file. I know it's because the file I'm using is a CAD generated die-line file from a packaging printer (non-uk) so somewhere the profile is probably set differently but why can't Illustrator then adopt the values you place in to it - or at least alert you to the option? BYW - yes I have changed the file colour mode to cmyk from rgb even before I place any objects. I'm baffled and worried about my print results.
Logos are fundamental brand components and variants simply are not acceptable.From a very frustrated brand manager
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Shivendra Agarwal
commented
Not a feature request.
Please add it as a BUG here and/or on pre-release forum for better tracking. -
Jedidiah Rogers
commented
What's the point in having swatches if their values are automatically changed when the document's color mode is changed? For example, if you have a yellow built out as 0/12/100/0 as a global CMYK swatch, then you change your document to RGB, then back to CMYK, the color values within the swatch change to 1.62/11.07/100. The same thing happens when I have a RGB swatch in an RGB file, convert to CMYK, then convert back.
And to make matters worse, If you have an .ase palette open and you try to fix the object's color, it will give you a conflict because of the original swatch NAME and NOT its value. If you choose to "Merge swatches", it does NOT even fix the color values in the swatch in the document.