color changes between docs with copy & paste in Illustrator CS6

[perspy]

designer copies & pastes a rectangle, that has a gradient fill, from one file to many new files. each time the gradient color changes. not a lot- but enough to make a red turn orange. i have not personally witnessed the c & p, but i have checked the colors on the gradient sliders & they are different. can this be possible? or am i being punked? any help will be greatly appreciated!

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

The documents have different color profiles.

If you go into Edit > Color Settings and check "ask when pasting" under Profile Mismatches, you will be presented with this dialog (self-explaining):

Of course, the real question is what profile the document should be. That depends on the use and destination.

[perspy]

thank you. i will check this out.

[perspy]

hi 21

i don't have CS6 to experiment with at home. if every designer in our department selects the same color profile in Bridge that meets our needs, and in Illustrator, everyone does this: Edit > Color Settings and check "ask when pasting" , would this solve the problem across the board?

thanks

pat

[D Fosse]

If it's only this one gradient rectangle, converting on paste should do it.

But I don't recommend doing that wholesale on a larger scale, it could have several unwanted and unexpected side effects. So I suggest clearing the underlying issue first: What profiles should the designers use, for different scenarios, when setting up new documents?

IOW, leave the documents in their present profiles for now, but convert on paste to solve the immediate problem.

[perspy]

actually it is more than just the gradient/rectangle. other colors too.

thanks for the advice.

[D Fosse]

If this is press-ready CMYK, you need a profile that reflects the actual press conditions. So you need to get a profile directly from the printer and use that. Standards vary around the world.

Converting CMYK to CMYK should be avoided. Things like 100K blacks turning into four color blacks is one of the things that can happen.

For files that are to be repurposed for different uses, working in an RGB color space would probably be better.

EDIT: When pasting from an RGB file to a CMYK file it will just get silently converted to the working CMYK space, so there normally should be no color shift. If there is, it's because of gamut limitations (color clipping). Not much to do about that except reconsider the colors.

[perspy]

21,

"Converting CMYK to CMYK should be avoided. Things like 100K blacks turning into four color blacks is one of the things that can happen."

can u elaborate? as u c, i am a color management newbie. in my office, we all just use the default settings. we are designing for print primarily. and a lot of our packaging is produced in china. we use cmyk & pms colors. if spot colors are not printing, which is 99% of the time, we just click to convert.

i don't know where to start! 

thanks much

p

[D Fosse]

I've no experience with spot, so others will have to chime in there. What I've said above is about general principles of color management.

But specifically, as far as CMYK is concerned, you can't just use default settings, there's no reason to assume that will be correct. As I said, you need to get a profile from the printer.

(100K black is a black that prints only on the black plate, like text. As opposed to a black that prints on all four plates).