Illustrator changed all my Spot colors to CMYK without asking

[shauns69357989]

Illy version 29.1.

My artwork has undergone several file revisions over months. Across all revisions I've used clinet specified Pantone colors on objects in the file. From the start, each files has been set to CMYK color mode.

In the newest file revision Illustrator changed all the spot colors to CMYK. The Pantone swatches are still in the Swatch window, but the shapes in the file are now all using CMYK color builds. This causesd a color shift on the latest print run.

This same thing has happend to other members of my team. Specitic spot colors change to CMYK. 

[Ton Frederiks]

Do you still have the Pantone Libraries?

Where do you store your client Pantone colors?

Do you use CC libraries?

I see in your second screendump that your 072 CV has an RGB Color mode, how did that happen?

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Yah, that's odd. CV swatches were always (and only) CMYK mixes. In fact 072 in the CV library should be 100C 79M 0Y 0K.

The values in the top grab are very definitely color managed conversions to CMYK. This doesn't happen "mysteriously". Someone did something.

Also, I'm wondering why are you using the current Pantone C (solid coated) sets. CV are very old and no longer relevant or even close matches to the true current 072 LAB values.

[shauns69357989]

I got the Pantone swatches by copying client supplied logs into my original file. I don't know why they show as RGB, or which legacy color library they came from. I only know that everything worked fine for 12 revisions.

On the latest revision I opened the file, changed a single clipping mask (didn't touch any colors), saved as a new revision. In the newly saved file all the Pantones were CMYK.

This has not only affected Pantone swatches. Other team members have had this happen with custom Spot swatches our Zund router needs to operate. If the router software sees a layer with a stroke color using a custom "Kiss-cut" spot color it knows to kiss-cut those lines. Well, my teammate set up his file with that specific swatch and when the print center opend the file, all the custom Kiss-Cut objects were converted to CMYK and were no longer tied to the actual swatch. 

So, regardless of what kind of swatches these are, they are somehow converting in the file save or open process.

[shauns69357989]

Don't know if this is relevent or not, but I just took a video of my teammate opening a file and for a split second, after the Generating Pixels box pops up we saw this box that said Converting to CMYK. This happens so quickly I can't catch it on my slightly faster machine.

Is this a normal process that happens to every file, or is this something odd.

[Ton Frederiks]

Can you share a file that still has the spot colors? Rename .ai to .pdf to be able to attach it to a post.

[shauns69357989]

I can only send a highly sanatized version of the file with client artwork removed.

[Ton Frederiks]

Thanks, but the same RGB spot colors and the same CMYK Hexachrome colors show in Illustrator 2023.

When did this start to happen?

[shauns69357989]

Hard to say for sure.

The first time we knew it happend for certin was about 2 weeks ago. We watched a team member save the file with correct colors. Moments later, another team member opened the same file and the spot colors on strokes changed to CMYK.

At first I thought it was somehow isolated to the custom Zund strokes. But then the incident with the Pantons colors happend. 

[shauns69357989]

Should have typed client supplied LOGOS

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Okay, did at any point did someone use the Edit > Convert to CMYK on all the objects? This would totally do what has happened to your file, including any spot color objects...: they would be converted from the RGB as defined in your swatch to the equivalent CMYK mix according to the output profile in your Color Settings. This does NOT change or delete the swatches, so that's why you are still seeing them.

And if you normally would send these to print as spot colors, the output RIP may be using a differnt way of converting the spot to process, which is why you will see difference is the final product. For example, the RIP may have a different CMYK output profile than what you used, resulting color shifts, OR even this: many high-end RIPs can do a thing called Pantone Replacement, which only references the color's number (072 in this case), ignores what the swatches definition is, and replaces it with a CMYK mix that matches an 072 swatch refernce BETTER on their press.

[shauns69357989]

I don't believe anyone did this on purpose. But, as I stated above, we took a video of my teammate opening a file and for a split second, after the Generating Pixels box pops up we saw this box that said Converting to CMYK.

[Monika Gause]

Are you using plugins? ESKO for instance?

[shauns69357989]

no plugins