Can you disable CPU preview?

[defaultzte417zzw8wt]

Over the past few months I've had an issue with Ai regarding colors. As others in the forums have talked about, CPU preview auto kicks on at times. But the colors are drastically different than sthe standard GPU preview. I'm working on creating colors for a brand, using Pantones. The CPU is what I came up with, and then noticed that these colors weren't accurate when pasting over to InDesign to create brand guidelines. They looked much closer to the GPU preview which is much duller. The problem is sometimes I don't notice CPU kicking in right away, and proceed to color things, and then deal with the frustration of having to find different colors. Or even worse, often times, GPU is greyed out so I'm unable to switch back, making it so it's really a low accurate guess to how my file will print. 

Furthermore, in the second photo, using GPU, you'll notice that the colors that get created are much different than what's being shown in the color picker window. As I try to select a minty green, a dark green is what shows up in my file. I get that CMYK can't pull off all the bright colors that digital files can, but still, this is pretty ridiculous. I've been using the program for a decade and it hasn't been until recently that I've lost my confidence in color. It's almost like CPU gives me nice but highly unaccurate colors, and GPU doesn't allow me to pick certain colors. I'm at a loss. Has anyone been experiencing the same thing? I keep my Ai updated in hopes that with a new update it will be resolved, but no luck so far. 

This document is in CMYK color mode, but the issue persists in RGB as well. 

[Ton Frederiks]

If you are using Pantone colors, Overprint Preview gives the most accurate preview.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

You haven't told us what your Color Settings are, and if they are the same across your Suite.

As far as the second issue, your selected color in the picker is VERY out of gamut, and based on your Gamut warning and CMYK mix, there's something wildly off. I just tried a "standard" North American Prepress setting for comparison and I get 62C 62Y, which is much closer, yet still expectedly out of gamut. I suspect your Illustrator might have been reset to Emulate Illustrator 6 due to a recent bug (now fixed). Check all of your settings, starting with Bridge.

Still, the logic of picking colors from an RGB color picker when you even state this is a CMYK document fails for me logically. You even said you know the colours are out of range, so why torment yourself?)

[defaultzte417zzw8wt]

Hmmm, I'm more of an amateur than I realized ha! When you say color settings, you're referring to something other than color mode right? Where would I look to find this?

And for issue 2, that was a pretty dramatic example to make the point, but I mainly noticed it when I was selecting pantones from the PANTONE+ Solid Coated color book. Shouldn't all standard pantones be in gamut? Or am I understanding that incorrectly? 

Regardless, something is off, as my standard workflow for years was to select Pantones from this color book in Ai, then create the brand book in InDesign and would have a pretty seemless flow. Now the colors vary so greatly between the programs, that it's a lot harder to work. I know it's an Ai problem, and something to do with the CPU preview. 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"Shouldn't all standard pantones be in gamut?" Nope, not at all.

Some can be, yes, but many won't be. This is because Pantone is an INK standard... A Pantone colour is a formula to mix a specialty spot ink for printing on a press.... thousands of colors not possible with CMYK printing and many much brighter and more vibrant. So the swatches in your apps (say Pantone Solid Coated "C") are there for you to pick them for Spot colour printing jobs and they will show you appoximately what they will look like on screen, and although it is possible for your Color Management (CM) settings to convert them to CMYK, you will have the same gamut issues. (just look in the greens, oranges and bright blues for examples)

Now, Pantone also has a set called Color Bridge where they have created a standard set of CMYK values for many of their Spot colours. These have been individually tweaked to give you the best possible results in a high quality printing situation using current technologies, even better in some ways than what you can get converting using your CM.

So, when designing brands, you need to be cognisant of the realtionship between Pantones and how they work in all types of print/production situations... this will inform your decisions about picking one color over another.

[defaultzte417zzw8wt]

Oh! So I just tried opening an older 2020 version of Adobe Illustrator and got this below message when I opened. Is this what you were getting at? Sounds like I do indeed have the Illustrator 6 color profile. How do I change this?

[defaultzte417zzw8wt]

Ah okay, found the color settings and switched it to the North American prepress. It's definitely closer so that's good, but the CPU preview still makes it substantially more vibrant than it should, and I'm unable to switch to GPU mode. Sometimes I can close a file and reopen it, and it will revert to GPU mode, but sometimes it locks me into CPU mode.

[Ton Frederiks]

Color management is off when AI 6 is emulated.

Please choose a setting for your region and check the profiles for your documents (Edit > Assign Profile...).

[defaultzte417zzw8wt]

Okay got it, yeah I see that now. When I switch to North America Prepress, then I'm allowed to assign a profile. Not sure which one of these would be local to the US haha

[Ton Frederiks]

RGB profiles are not specific to a region, the CMYK profiles are.

[defaultzte417zzw8wt]

Ah, okay. Looks like I do have a US one selected, assuming I'm looking in the right spot. Would you recommend a different one? I've never messed with this stuff before haha

[Ton Frederiks]

Adobe RGB is good for editing images, but not when you want to export Illustrator files for the Web.

You mentioned Pantone colors, these are not useful when working in RGB, they are special ink mixes.

Please read about color management, as a start:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/keeping-colors-consistent.html

and

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/color.html

Or follow a training:

There are good training videos on LinkedIn like: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/indesign-color-management/color-management-fundamentals