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Inspiring
November 30, 2020
Question

Illustrator interface displays darker

  • November 30, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 1066 views

Not sure why this happens, but it appears that Adobe Illustrator is darker than other Adobe software, and what it displays doesn't reflect what it exports. Here's an example of what Illustrator looks like:

This is what the exported image looks like as a PNG:

And this is what the same Illustrator looks like when imported to Photoshop:

 

This started happening after I replaced my monitor's DVI cable with an HDMI one. However, it only seems like Illustrator was effected by the change. 

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

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1 reply

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 1, 2020

Your file is a CMYK document. Your black probably is a 100% K.

Illustrator is probably set up to "Display all blacks as RGB 000"

So what you see in Illustrator doesn't correspond to the output.

 

When exporting PNG, it gets converted to RGB. So I'm not sure why you start in CMYK at all.

WP275Author
Inspiring
December 1, 2020

Could you explain this further? I changed the document color mode to RGB and the preferences to display acurrate blacks instead of rich blacks, shown below.

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 2, 2020

100% K is just not pitch dark black. And color management respects that and converts the color accordingly.

 

So if you want an RGB file with ptich dark black, the you have to set it up that way.