Why does Illustrator change rich black values in cmyk to other value willy nilly

[Andrew28736415na6p]

Example 1: I have a cmyk file. I create a rectangle and apply a gradient with 3 stops: rich black (60,40,40,100), rich black again, and red.

But then when I spot check with shift+eyedropper anywhere in the black region, it shows 74.97, 67.92, 67.05, 90.15

Example 2: sometimes I when create a new shape and set the color to 60,40,40,100, . But when I check the color later, it's been changed to that same other black listed above. And the only way to get the rich black to stick that I can find is to copy an object with the same rich black from another document, paste it into the current doc and then set the color of the new object by eyedropping the pasted one. THEN it takes the rich black and keeps it. But if I manually set it to 60,40,40,, illustrator just changes it.

This is causing so many issues with printing as I have to constantly check all rich black objects to make sure they haven't mysteriously reverted to regular black. This only seems to happen with black/rich black, i havent noticed any unsolicited value switching with any other colors

The file is definitely cmyk . How can I stop this insanity

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Andrew28736415na6p,

Could you share more details, like the version of the OS/Illustrator installed, screenshots of the Application, Document, and OS color settings, and a small screen recording of your workflow, so I can check this with the team?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[Andrew28736415na6p]

Im using Illustrator 2025 (29.2.1)

attached here is a video showing the issue- in this document it changes the black to 60,60,60,100. in other documents it has changed it to 74.97, 67.92, 67.05, 90.15, but the issue is that it's changing it period. I want the peace of mind that if i set a color, it will remain that color.

[HARSHIKA_VERMA]

Hi Andrew28736415na6p,

Thank you for sharing the video. The latest version of Illustrator is 29.5. Would you mind going to "Check for updates" in the Creative Cloud Desktop app and updating Illustrator? 

I am unable to reproduce the issue on the latest version on my macOS machine. 

Could you please share the info requested by our expert, Monika? 

We would be happy to assist you further.

Thanks,

Harshika

[Monika Gause]

When you select the object and just look up in the gradient stop in the color panel, which color is it? 

[Bobby Henderson]

I believe the problem you're seeing is a strange quirk with the eyedropper tool. When holding the Shift key and clicking to get a color sample from a specific location in the gradient the eyedropper apparently must be thinking in RGB mode despite it being a CMYK document. The RGB sample gets converted on the fly to CMYK in the Color palette.

I created a box with a 3 stop gradient like you described (the first two stops as C60-M40-Y40-K-100 and the last stop as C0-M100-Y100-K0). If I use the eyedropper tool to shift-click location samples in the black area of the gradient it will initially report a correct C60-M40-Y40-K-100 value. But if I start shift-clicking in the reddish areas and then go back to the black area it reports the odd C74.97-M67.92-Y67.05-K-90.15 value. Nevertheless, the values in the gradient's stops remain unchanged. I can click on other objects with solid fills and the eyedropper will report their CMYK values accurately. There is something about gradients that throws the eyedropper tool into a different mind set.

This quirk with the eyedropper tool doesn't seem to respond to different settings in Preferences and the Appearance of Black. The same tool behavior occurs with either option for display and output.