Color Display in document - my graphics (CMYK) are displaying in RGB -- too bright, ugly!

[jtwork]

I created mulitple grahics in Illustrator (CMYK) - using turquoise green and emerald green. Then I import into Framemaker and my turquoise is regular green and my green is neon green (RGB display). How do I view my document in CMYK. This neon green is annoying, not accurate and is hard to work with (hard on the eyes, I had to turn down the brightness of my monitor). Not to mention it really distorted the design (it's ugly) on the screen. The pdf is correct. Ridiculous! How do I fix this?

[Bob_Niland]

Anyone with experience in this may need to know:
⦿ what is the image file format (e.g, .EPS?)
⦿ what color profile was used to create and export it?
⦿ what preview/thumbnail options were selected on export?

FM has no color management to speak of (and Windows is a minefield of pitfalls for CMYK). When I last had to deal with print & PDF harmonization, I just punted and went with sRGB, and even that required some PDF post-processing (to tag the images for color management).

[jtwork]

Thank you for your quick reply. The images are a direct placement of Illustrator (CMYK) "ai" files.

AI files saved with "Embedded ICC Profiles, Use Compression"

Thank you.

[Bob_Niland]

Is that "direct placement" as in copied-into-document, or imported-as-.ai ?

That aside, when authoring in FM, if the image format includes a preview/thumbnail, what you see during edit in FM may be the thumbnail. I know this is the case for EPS, where it's a low-res indexed color, or even B&W bitmap. I used to employ a scaling dodge to make the thumbnail detailed enough to add callouts over it. The color model was a lost cause until it reached the rendered output.

Other file formats may also include thumbnails, such as .psd & .pdf. I don't know about .ai in this regard. I've never worked with .ai (or .psd) files directly in FM (due largely to mis-matched app revs in the environment at the time), and .pdf import wasn't stable in the rev of FM I was using. Also, I would generally steer clear of formats that contain tons more data & metadata than is needed for the instant image. If CMYK is a requirement, EPS may still be the top answer (if only because Windows passes it through unmolested).

[Stefan Gentz]

@Bob_Niland: Since FM 2020 FrameMaker supports embedded color profiles in pixel images (like jpg) and also writes the profile information into the PDF. This is supported only in the new PDFL-based engine (not in the Distiller route).

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Since you can also save your AI files as editable PDF and editable EPS, try both those formats for your graphics to see if the preview is different. 

Restating and adding to what Bob mentioned, you'll also have various color profile and preview options for all 3 formats (AI, PDF, EPS). Check those out and let us know if any specific combinations work well with your bright colors.

-Matt