color damage on Illustrator

[Musheer]

Hello Everyone,

I dragged an image from Photoshop into Illustrator, and suddenly all the colors in the Illustrator project becoming hight saturated and brightness, the vectors and images.
It's not a CMYK or RGB issue, the files themselves are damaged. I do not have any other copies of the photos, I pulled them all directly from Photoshop.
I tried to change the file fron CMYK to RGB and the opposite, tried to move the vectors and images to different project, save.. still facing same issue.. Hight saturated and brightness.

[Monika Gause]

The correct way is to save the Image as a PSD file or TIF file and then place it in Illustrator.

But even when copy/pasting the color management settings should prevent this stuff. So how is your color management set up?

Also: converting back and forth between RGB and CMYK ruins your colors even more.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

This is definitely an ICC mismatch issue. Also, you should be Placing files instead of pasting or dragging.

First off, check your Color Settings and make sure they match between Photoshop and Illustrator. Even if they do, check what ICC Profile is currently assigned to your PS image and also what your Illustrator document is set at.

If they are different, say the PS is AdobeRGB and your Ill doc is sRGB, how this mismatch is handled depends on the options in your Color Settings... e.g. you can have it warn you when you Place (or Paste) into Illustrator, and it will then ask you what to do with it.

All that said, I was able to reproduce your issue in a test file. It seems if you DRAG from PS to Ill, there seems to be a bug in that the ICC Profile assigned to the image CHANGES the Assigned profile of the Illustrator document to that of the incoming image. I can see that messing up the colors of everything in your document, as it did for me.

If there's a reason you don't want to Place the image, try copy and paste instead of dragging and see if it changes anything. (You have to make sure Photoshop is set up to Export to Clipboard in Preferences > General for pasting to work)

[Ton Frederiks]

I had the same conclusion, but my answer was not posted. This could explain a lot of reports like Illustrator is changing my colors on its own.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

@Ton Frederiks I've done a few more tests, and sure enough, that's what's happening. It may not be instant, but if the document is closed and reopened, you can see the colors change, and the Assigned profile of the Illustrator document has been altered. That being said, resetting it back to what one had intended, the colours pop back.

Here's a test where I dragged a widegamut ProPhoto image (the smaller set of RGB bands) into an sRGB Illustrator document:

 

However, Placing it or Copy/Pasting works fine.

[Ton Frederiks]

Brad @ Roaring Mouse  here are my examples:

[Ton Frederiks]

Yes, resetting it back using Assign Profile corrects the colors. Illustrator does not have a Convert to Profile option, so the numbers don't change with Assign profile, just the label (color profile)

[Ton Frederiks]

What is your Document Color Profile, before and after drag and drop?

Placing an RGB file works fine, but dragging and dropping gives problems.

An RGB file dropped into a CMYK Illustrator file changes the profile of the Illustrator file to Untagged CMYK.

An RGB file with a color profile that differs from the Illustrator RGB Document profile and dragged and dropped into that file, changes the Illustrator document color profile.

Although my Color Settings have warnings for profile mismatches turned on, no warnings during drag and drop.

You can check if that happens when you use Show Document Color Profile at the bottom of your document window.

Looks like a bug to me, but Place is currently the way around this.

[Ton Frederiks]

I reported this bug at Uservoice, here is where you can vote:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447-illustrator-desktop-bugs/suggestions/47523872-drag-a...

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Thanks, Ton. Voted!