Bug in Illustrator RGB spot to process conversion of global swatches

[chris_d_wells]

I hope someone can help me with this – I can't find a solution to it anywhere (or even a mention of it). So I'm wondering if it's a new bug.

I have a file I recently created in Illustrator for Mac.

I imported some swatches from a CC Library containing of a client's brand assets.

The swatches all import from CC Libraries as Spot colours, despite being in RGB (screenshot below):

This is the first part of the problem. Why does Illustrator insist on defining RGB colours as Spot swatches by default? Regardless, in the past, I've always been able to just convert any imported RGB Spot swatch from a CC Library into conventional RGB Process swatch, while keeping them as Global swatches:

However, in this file, I can't convert the Spot RGB swatches to standard Process Global RGB swatches. Instead, when I set the colour to be Process Color & Global in Swatch Options, the OK button no longer works. The options dialog box won't close and I can only Cancel (screenshot below):

I have run a test on this with a new swatch in the same file and I discovered that, if I clicked the Preview checkbox on and off and clicked OK the dialog box would then close. However, the change wasn't made – the swatch remained a Spot swatch.

In fact, I then tried to delete the test swatch and saw this old problem which I thought had been fixed – deleting a swatch doesn't remove it from the swatch list. It just leaves a blank swatch which is no longer even editable (screenshot below):

This is the worst I've ever seen this problem with swatch management in Illustrator.

By the way, the reason I want to change from Spot to Process is to avoid the weird grey halo you can see on gradient colour transitions like the one between the bright blue area and the darker shadow in the first screenshot below. Compare it with the lower screenshot which has a smoother transition which I was able to produce by starting with a new file:

I'd appreciate any help you can give me with this. It's got me baffled. Thanks!

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

Your global becomes spot is a known (unfixed) problem, you can add your vote here:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/319...

I cannot reproduce the second problem, is it document specific, repeatable after restart?

[chris_d_wells]

Thanks for pointing that Uservoice post to me Ton – I hadn't seen it before. I added my vote and will keep my fingers crossed that this won't be one of those issues that's never acknowledged by Adobe.

Update: I tested a completely new file. When I import the same brand swatches as a theme from CC Library, I can convert the global spot to process with no problems.

So I imported all my artwork from the original document into the new one and almost all the spot colours are now convertible to process. However, one swatch is still locked, so I suppose now I need to try to work out what is causing it to be locked...

I'm wondering if it might be specified in a paragraph or graphic style somewhere which might be preventing me from changing it. But it's hard to chase this down since Illustrator doesn't seem to offer any tools for diagnosing problems in colour swatches. I exported a PDF and used Acrobat's Output Preview - Spot Plates feature to find every instance of the Spot swatch to enable me to change it for another swatch but I still can't convert it to Process.

This is absolutely infuriating.

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

In Acrobat's Output Preview you can click on Ink Manager where you can Convert All Spots to Process or click a specific one to convert.