Illustrator: PNGs turn negative after saving then reopening

[CCUMarketing]

I'm running version 26.3.1, my operating system is Windows 10 Pro version 21H1.

Every time I place a PNG into an illustrator doc, either CMYK or RGB color space, it turns negative when I reopen the document to work on it. I've made sure it's an 8 bit PNG, doesn't happen to any other image format, and it doesn't matter if the PNG is transparent or not. It happens to both downloaded PNGs and the ones I make myself either in photoshop to remove a background or if I'm exporting a vector image as a PNG to place in a different doc.

I've attached a before screenshot, one where I'm looking at the preview from file explorer, and another of what happens to the document when I open it. Any ideas on how to fix it? My work around for the moment is placing PSD files, but with only having so much storage I rather place PNGs.

[Anshul_Saini]

Hi @Zuzanna5D4A,

The issue you mentioned was reported around two years ago and primarily occurred on the desktop version of Illustrator. If you’re experiencing something similar on the iPad version, it could be due to a different cause.

Could you please:

1. Share a screen recording demonstrating the issue.

2. Provide the PNG file and the AI file you’re working with?

This will help us test the files on our end using the iPad version of Illustrator and better understand what might be going wrong. Looking forward to your response so we can assist further!

Best,

Anshul Saini