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benji-the-great
benji-the-great
Inspiring
December 17, 2018
Answered

InDesign & Illustrator - colors displaying wrong

  • December 17, 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 19446 views

Hi all - question on color:

I've recently noticed something in my Adobe software that's been giving me some grief. In both Illustrator and InDesign, I get colors showing up oversaturated and a little overbright. Photoshop however, doesn't seem to be having this issue. It also doesn't seem to show the colors wrong in the thumbnails - even from within Ai and InD, on the home screens - only in the workspace. I can't place when this started happening, but it's not always been this way (probably the past couple months or so, max). For example, my company's color is sort of a tomato, orangey-red (#D24727) (similar to the main color of Microsoft Office), but when used in Illustrator or InDesign, it shows up as full-on RED. Like fire-engine, cherry, candy-apple red. Pretty different from what it should be. In Photoshop though, it looks correct. In Ai & InD, I've tried adjusting the view, and basic things like that, but have avoided actual color profiles/settings because I've heard they are very hard to fix and not really to be messed with unless you are well versed in it, which I'm not. And it's not a RGB vs CMYK thing - that was one of the first things I checked. Anyway, it's not normally been like this until recently. Makes me wonder if I accidentally set something wrong somewhere, although if this were the case, I likely would have had to do it in both programs, correct? I've been looking online, trying to find a reason for this issue, but alas, nothing. Can anyone help? Any ideas? Considering that it regards my company's color, it's a pretty big deal. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Ben

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer benji-the-great

    UPDATE: I called Adobe Help last week, and they escalated the issue. They've since released an update and my colors now look better than ever across the board - InD, Ai & Ps all look exaclty the same now. It was clearly a bug issue but is now fixed. Just thought I'd share - Thanks!

    5 replies

    lirpasnooze
    lirpasnooze
    Participant
    March 17, 2020

    I tried all the color suggestions in ther thread.  No luck.  I looked into the Illustrator version and I'm all up-to-date.  I also looked at the color profile on my Thunderbolt Display and put it back to factory settings.  Still no changes at all.  Not sure what to do at this point.  I'm trying to accomplish neon green and it looks more like puke green, ugh.    What to do now?

    lirpasnooze
    lirpasnooze
    Participant
    March 17, 2020

    And yes I do see that this thread is for InDesign, but I thought Adobe would have fixed the issue in Illustrator too, but it doesn't seem so.

    benji-the-great
    benji-the-greatAuthorCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    January 16, 2019

    UPDATE: I called Adobe Help last week, and they escalated the issue. They've since released an update and my colors now look better than ever across the board - InD, Ai & Ps all look exaclty the same now. It was clearly a bug issue but is now fixed. Just thought I'd share - Thanks!

      JonathanArias
      JonathanArias
      Legend
      December 18, 2018

      Why not work with your PMS branding colors instead?

      rob day
      Community Expert
      rob dayCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 18, 2018

      Unless you are exclusively printing solid ink spot colors to a separate press plate, the Pantone system would still require setting the correct document color profiles for any conversions to RGB for screen simulations, or CMYK for process color printing simulations—there's no way around that.

      rob day
      Community Expert
      rob dayCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 18, 2018

      In Ai & InD, I've tried adjusting the view, and basic things like that, but have avoided actual color profiles/settings because I've heard they are very hard to fix and not really to be messed with unless you are well versed in it, which I'm not

      That's not true. In order to get consistent color you have to pay attention to color modes and the assigned document profiles.

      Hex values are simply a different notation for RGB colors used for HTML coding. With HTML the assumption is RGB colors are displayed as sRGB, so to match the hex colors between PS, AI, and ID, you have to make sure the color space is RGB and the document's assigned RGB profile is sRGB.

      In Photoshop that is pretty straight forward—create a new RGB mode document with sRGB assigned. In all three apps you can change an existing document's profile via Edit>Assign Profile...

      Like Photoshop, Illustrator has a single document color mode, so to create consistent hex colors the mode has to be RGB—File>Document Color Mode>RGB, with the assigned document profile as sRGB.

      InDesign lets you use both CMYK and RGB color on the same page, so with Assign Profiles... you choose both a CMYK and RGB profile to handle the color display of the two modes. When you create a new color or swatch make sure its mode is RGB—in the Colors panel choose the mode from the panel's flyout menu.

      RGB hex colors profiled with sRGB colors in all 3 apps

      In this case the ID version doesn't match because of the ProPhoto RGB assignment.

      benji-the-great
      benji-the-greatAuthor
      Inspiring
      December 18, 2018

      Hmm... I must be missing something here. As far as I can tell, I followed exactly what you said and saw no difference. I assigned new profiles (sRGB) to all, and maybe I blinked or something - but I saw no difference - on any of them.

      I'm not sure if will show up correctly here, but below is a screenshot of what I'm getting. Ps on the left, then InD, and then Ai. In Ai, on the far right, you can see my company color from the library. (hopefully) You can see that it shows differently than what is on the artboard (and yes it is set to that color). Also, it shows that Photoshop is still correct, but the other two are showing over-red.

      JonathanArias
      JonathanArias
      Legend
      December 18, 2018

      Are you working with hex values as you bounce around the programs?

      benji-the-great
      benji-the-greatAuthor
      Inspiring
      December 18, 2018

      yes, tried hex, rgb and pantone. still shows it as off. seems to be less that the color is correctly selected, and more that it is displaying off.

      JonathanArias
      JonathanArias
      Legend
      December 18, 2018

      monitor needs calibration? have you tested all of this on a different machine with a different monitor?

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