Colors changing when Saving AI to Illustrator EPS

[ohmitmedia]

I've been designing weekly large banners in Illustrator for the past month.  I am on banner #5 and have had no problems previously.  Everytime, I open the previous banner AI file, make the design changes, and save it as the new banner, and then do a Save As to an Illustrator EPS file for easy printing on our large format printer.  It has been easy and routine.

This time I went through the same process, but when I save the Illustrator EPS file, the colors are coming out incorrect - particularly darker.  My medium dark blues in the design look almost black in th EPS file.  I tried printing, thinking maybe it was just how the file was displaying in Preview on my screen, but nope.  The colors print incorrectly too.

I was able to solve the problem by switching the color setting to RGB, but I would like to understand what happened and why the change?  Everything was working great in CMYK for the past 4 weeks, but it's not working now.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks. 

[Guest]

You might have lost your Preference settings and / or your Color Settings.  Check to see if they are the same as they were when everything was going along smoothly.

[emil_emil]

Illustrator EPS does not support color profiles.

In order to see the printed colors correctly on your screen. You have to have your monitor and printer color calibrated and profiled. You have to have the color profile of your printer installed on your computer. For the final result the color space (profile) of your printer must be assigned as the color space of your document or at least used as a soft proof preview. If you are sending for print the artwork with a file format like Illustrator EPS that doesn't support color profiles, before saving you have to convert the colors from the current color space to the printer's color space. Unfortunately unlike Photoshop, Illustrator doesn't have Convert to Profile command but can convert as well if you create a new document with the destination color space assigned using Edit > Assign profile (the printer profile in your case) and paste the artwork in the new document. The color management will try to keep the color appearance the same or as close as possible within the limitations of the gamut of the destination color space.

If this is the first time you hear about all this, and you are in full charge of your equipment, the fact that you printed previously colors that you were happy with was lucky shots.

[ohmitmedia]

Thanks - ya this is the first time i've heard about this.  we got our large format printer about 2 months, but most of what we print is in Photoshop and comes out great.  It's not a post-script printer, and there doesn't appear to be a profile available to download for the printer.  I didn't realize EPS doesn't maintain the profile, so I tried saving as PDF instead and set the color setting to maintain the embedded profile and that does appear to do what I want.  Is there anything wrong with my solution that I might be missing?  It seems easier than trying to get the EPS file to work.

Thanks.

[MW Design · Accepted solution]

The PDF method is exactly what I would do. EPS an an outdated means, PDF is a modern work-flow.

Take care, Mike

[emil_emil]

EPS is old and kind of outdated. Use what works, PDF is good.

[Niclas Haraldsen]

I have the same problem, with Illustrator all of a sudden saves my EPS files much darker, I use the EPS files in Premiere and After Effects and other alike software, none of these are reading pdf files, so this is a huge problem.

[Monika Gause]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/niclas+haraldsen  schrieb

I have the same problem, with Illustrator all of a sudden saves my EPS files much darker, I use the EPS files in Premiere and After Effects and other alike software, none of these are reading pdf files, so this is a huge problem.

Why don't you use AI/PDF files in After Effects and Premiere?

[mikey_likes_it]

Why does Illustrator change the color of the rulers and make the artwork darker when you compare the exact same file side-by-side when one is an EPS file and the other is an AI file? The Attachments show the difference that happens in the UI as well as the artwork. Each has the exact same color profiles / document color mode / GPU mode / document raster settings. For all accounts, the files are the same, but something is making this color shift. The Top is the EPS file (darker UI and artwork). The Bottom is the AI file (lighter UI and artwork).

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