Exported file looking washed out

Question

I've been having this problem in the last few days where I have exported a file and the color has looked washed out (but it looks fine in Illustrator). When I create a new document and copy and paste the contents of the original document into it, and export it, the color look fine.

When creating a new, second document to paste the original document's contents onto, I noticed my color mode was set to CMYK, so I switched it RGB and then created my document. So perhaps my original document's initial color mode upon creation was CMYK. I don't remember if I changed it or not when in the document, but before exporting, I made sure that the color mode was RGB (through File > Document Color Mode). Despite that, upon exporting, the image colours looked faded! The original file is the photo on the left and the second file where I pasted the image into (where the colours are fine) is on the right.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. 🙂

Monika Gause · Accepted Answer

When you embed a photo in a file, it gets converted to the file's color space. In this case CMYK

When you then paste the photo into an RGB file, you won't get the bright colors back. The photo doesn't remember the former color.

Mylenium · Answer

Same old, same old: Total lack of color management. It would be mandatory for CMYK, anyway, and if it's still screwy in RGB it means your monito color profile/ setting diverges from AI's default assumed sRGB. You need to read up on how to use proof preview and all that and since you're dealing with pixel art, the same applies to editing in Photoshop as apparently a specific color profiel attached to the image might also affect output rendering. No easy answers here. you have to read the online help and do a bit of research on teh web. CM is a complicated thing.

Mylenium

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