Colors are dull in Adobe AI

[Willard Jenkins]

I cannot find a solution. Many people have had this issue for years. I have asked this before on my profile and apparently it was a bug. I have updated my Adobe Illustrator and the issue persists. This has happened at least 20 times where at some point the document will just start having dull colors. Why does this happen???

[Willard Jenkins]

I should not Edit > Edit Colors everything is GREYED OUT. I cannot conver to CMYK or RBG or ANYTHING. 

[Willard Jenkins]

Moving from Using the Community (which is about the forums) to the correct forum... Mod
To ask in the forum for your program please start at https://community.adobe.com/

[Monika Gause]

From your screenshot it looks like the document is in CMYK color mode?

Please tell us how color managewment is set up.

Please tell us if you are in soft proof.

[Willard Jenkins]

So the document was in CMYK but the option to convert to RGB was greyed out. Only "Convert to CMYK" was visible. So I converted CMYK to CMYK. After doing that all options on the Edit > Edit Colors were greyed out and I could not convert to anything. 

How would I go about checking if I am in soft proof?

I should note that this occurs midway editing documents sometimes. I also found a fix. I created a new document in RGB and redid the elements like "text" and "Gradient Square" and sure enough I was able to get the accurate color. However, the screenshot listed is a perfect example of what is still shown. Meaning, although I am getting accurate colors, its still showing the incorrect color in the preview box, just like the screenshot. So I have a feeling I am bound to run into the issue again at some point down the road. 

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Please learn color management and everything else there is to learn about color.

Soft proof can be found in the View menu.

To convert the document color mode: File > Document color mode.

You are probably using a monitor profile as your working color profile (one of the causes of this issue). Probably color management is set up wrong.

[Willard Jenkins]

Thanks! Switching it from CYMK to RGB via Document Color Mode worked great for me!

[Simmer1]

Hi,

Here is a link that will help you understanding color models: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/illustrator/using/color.html