Copied Photos are washed out when placed or pasted in Illustrator

[piah49457975]

Hi,

When I copy and paste a photo into illustrator the colors in photo are completely washed out. I haven't made any changes to color settings and this just started happening in the last week. I unistalled and reinstalled the app and still the same thing. I attached a screenshot of the actual photo what it looks like in ai at left.

I messed with RGB/CMYK settings but nothing changed. Please help!

Pia

[Bobby Henderson]

This behavior happens in a completely new document? When you select the image how does it look in the Appearance panel? Is there anything extra going on there? Or is there something applied to the layer where the image resides?

[piah49457975]

Hi Bobby,

Yes, this happens in a completely new doc as well as existing. Image in the transpanrency tab looks normal and transparency is set at 100%, see screenshot. I'm just copying a section of a jpeg and pasting in ai, been doing the same for years and have not changed settings. Thanks for your help.

[Ton Frederiks]

Are you working in RGB or CMYK? Where do you copy it from?

Can you show what your color settings look like?

Can you check if your document color profile is the same as your working profile (Edit > Assign Profile can show if they are different).

I

[piah49457975]

Hi Ton,

My color setting is CMYK and as far as I can tell it's the same in Assigned Profile as Document Color Mode. I don't use my files for printing, just sending to a factory for viewing as a pdf and photos need to be clear, and as you can see in the initial screenshot they look almost transparent. Thanks for your help.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @piah49457975,

Thanks for reaching out. If you're using macOS, please try recalibrating your monitor for sRGB (https://adobe.ly/4rhUOZ9), restart your computer, and then relaunch Illustrator to see if this resolves the issue.

Also, kindly synchronize colour settings across Adobe applications by following the steps here (https://adobe.ly/3XKcIpU) and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[Ton Frederiks]

If you copy and paste an RGB image in a CMYK document, your RGB colors get converted to CMYK, resulting in a less vibrant image.

What is the default RGB working space in your View > Color Settings?

Where do you copy it from and has the application that you copy the file from a profile assigned to the image?

It is also recommended to place files instead of copy/paste.

That said, if you do not intent to print it, use an Illustrator RGB document to keep the colors vibrant.

[piah49457975]

Hi Anubhav and Ton,

Thanks for your replies. So to clarify, older photos that have been copied and pasted into the same doc, along with all sketch colors still look vibrant, so I don't think it's a monitor issue. I syncronized the app with Bridge and changed the Document Color Mode to RGB but still the same issue. And now I've messed with the settings so much that I don't even know where I was to begin with. What are the default color settings for Illustrator? I just want to go back to that and start over. Thanks so mcuh for bearing with me.

[Ton Frederiks]

Hi @piah49457975  Don't change color modes from CMYK  to RGB, the color loss is already done.

Start a new RGB document by selecting one of the Art & Illustration presets and try that with your images.

But first make sure that your color settings are correct for your region.

For the US, select North America General Purpose 2

Then you can create new documents based on those settings.

[piah49457975]

Hi Ton, thanks for all your help. None of these tips actually fixed the issue. I'll keep researching.

[Ton Frederiks]

Unfortunate that your problem is not solved. Maybe you can get some clues if and why there is a color conversion taking place during pasting/placing your image.

Can you turn on the checkboxes in your Color Settings for missing and mismatched profiles?

[piah49457975]

Hi Ton, that actually fixed the issue but I get this warning.  Is there a box I can check something so it won't send warning? And somehow the background grid is now visible on top of photo/sketch. How do I get rid of that?

[piah49457975]

And it only comes out clear if I place, which I would like to avoid since I have to create clipping masks for every photot that I place, rather than copying the smaller desired section of the photo from the jpeg. 

[piah49457975]

Hi Ton, I made a discovery, if I take a screenshot of the jpg and copy and paste from that into my file, it shows up clear, very strange but it's a workaround. I'm baffled but it doesn't look like it has anyting to do with illustrator color settings but rather how the copying of the image happens in preview. Thanks for all your help. I'll let you know if I have any oother questions.

[Ton Frederiks]

Good to hear you've got it working the way you like.

But the whole copy/paste drag/drop workflow has been messy lately.

[piah49457975]

So I confirmed the issue is when I copy part of an image/jpg in preview. If I open the photo with Acrobat and make copy from there it pastes in full color into my illustrator doc.

Thanks so much for your help, if anything I learned a little bit about color settings 🙂