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M
MarieMeyer
Inspiring
April 8, 2021
Question

tif vs png

  • April 8, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 757 views

I was having a problem today with a photo changing colors between PS and AI. I have their color management settings synced. Thru trial and error, I found that saving it as a tif instead of a png solved the problem. A bit of Googling suggested that profiles are not supported in pngs in Adobe applications. Is this true? If so - why?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    Ton Frederiks
    Community Expert
    Ton FrederiksCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 21, 2021

    In Illustrator PNGs and profiles are a mess.

    It does not read nor write profiles when importing or exporting (save for web is the exception and can convert to sRGB).

    If your Illustrator document has Adobe RGB as the document profile and you export as PNG, the rgb numbers will be exported, but the profile is not saved.

    If you open the resulting PNG in Photoshop, Photoshop wrongly assumes sRGB, you need to assign the Adobe RGB profile to get the correct colors.

    If you place a PNG in Illustrator it assumes that it has the current document color profile and ignores an embedded profile.

    Unless you only work with sRGB files, PNG is the wrong file format to use in Illustrator.

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    April 9, 2021

    By the way, if going from PS to AI, while it might seem obvious to save a PNG or TIFF or JPEG, consider just placing the PSD.

    M
    MarieMeyerAuthor
    Inspiring
    April 9, 2021

    I export the image so that I can crop it to the size I want it in Illustrator and also because I assume it keeps the Illustrator file smaller. Is that daft?

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    April 12, 2021

    No, those are good reasons. But it might, for now, solve your colour issues. Or it might not. It could be interesting to find out, it might inform the original problem.

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    April 9, 2021

    I have seen it said that Photoshop "Export" and "Save for Web" don't save profiles in PNG, while "Save as" does. Sometimes people use Save for Web or Export when not intending (only) web use, and this causes problems. The function name "Export" is especially unhelpful, because it gives no clue of its limitations.

      M
      MarieMeyerAuthor
      Inspiring
      April 9, 2021

      Ah. That is exactly what I have been doing - using Export.

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