Color Settings - Reverting to Emulate Adobe Indesign 2.0 CMS Off

[craigb17]

Hi - My color settings keep reverting from 'North America General Purpose 2' to 'Emulate Adobe Indesign 2.0 CMS Off' - this is occuring frequently. I am using MacOS Big Sur 11.0.1 and Indesign 16.1. I have not had this issue occur previously.

Any help appreciated - thanks.

[Steve Werner]

This is apparently a bug some people are experiencing. See this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/indesign-16-1-color-mismatch-issues/td-p/11900156

[rob day]

The fix is to delete or move the Adobe Color caches folder. Should be in user>Library>Caches>Adobe>Color

[rob day · Accepted solution]

It might actually be this:

 ⁨Users⁩ ▸ ⁨username ▸ ⁨Library⁩ ▸ ⁨Preferences⁩ ▸ ⁨Adobe⁩ ▸ ⁨Color ▸ ⁨ACEConfigCache2.lst

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/photoshop-update-causes-indesign-color-management-settings-t...

[craigb17]

Neither of these locations exist at my end - could it be located elsewhere? As mentioned I am using MacOs Big Sur 11.0.1 and Indesign 16.1.

[rob day]

By default OSX hides the User Library.

1. Click Go > Go to folder from the menu bar.
2. On macOS Big Sur or later, and type “/Library”. On older versions of macOS, type “~/Library” (with the tilde) into the box.
3. Hit Go and the folder will open.

[craigb17]

Hi Rob - Yes I had located these folders previously, but neither of my Caches or Preferences folders contains an Adobe folder.

[Marina23151530yb5d]

I have the same problem. I cannot find a Adobe Folder in Preferences / Cashes ... 

[rob day]

The bug was fixed in versions after 16.0, so simply changing your Color Settings to the desired CSF should work.

[simoner90400004]

You’re right, thanks a lot!

[simoner90400004]

You’re right, this is the problem! After deleting that file I had to set the Color Prefernces in Adobe Bridge again, but now it works. Thanks a lot!!

[arbuzovmaksim]

Unfortunately, this solution works only 2 minutes and then the problem comes back again. It is just ridiculous every update to have different problems with your applications.

[marjee36087345]

I have exactly the same problem. It only works less than a minute.

[xxTHExDUKExx]

I came across this aswell the last few days and deleting the folder didn´t help me. I usually spread my set profile via Bridge, but this time it seems it doesn´t help.

What I found out is that every single time I changed the profile back to it´s supposed one in Indesign and simply changed into Photoshop and went back to Indesign the Profile got deactivated again. Making me suspision I looked into Photoshop and found out that my profile was not set correctly in there.

It seems that the Bridge did not spread my settings to Photoshop. I changed the profile in PS manually and - WOW - Indesign does not deactivate the profile anymore.

Maybe this helps

[marjee36087345]

It seems that changing colour management in Photoshop manually helps. 

[alison.aaha]

I'm also having this same issue. I deleted the "ACEConfigCache2.lst" file and tried opening Bridge but it won't open. It keeps freezing. 

[Laubender]

Hi alison.aaha,

there is no need to synch color management via Adobe Bridge

It could be convenient, yes, but there is no need to do this.

InDesign, Illustrator and PhotoShop, they all share the same panel when you have to switch to a different color setting.

The most options to define a custom color setting and save it as csf file is with PhotoShop. So define the csf in PhotoShop and load it with InDesign, Illustrator and PhotoShop.

However, you should look into your crashing issues with Adobe Bridge.

But this here is the wrong forum to do this. Better ask here in the Bridge Forum:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/bridge/bd-p/bridge?page=1&sort=latest_replies&filter=all

And with all related questions for color managements go to:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/color-management/bd-p/Color-Management?page=1&sort=latest_replies&fil...

Ah. There is already a thread underway that could be very interesting for all facing that bug:

Color settings (from Bridge: Synchronize settings) change all the time
massimob47359698, Mar 12, 2021

https://community.adobe.com/t5/color-management/color-settings-from-bridge-synchronize-settings-chan...

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Yes, there's no NEED to use Bridge, but it does help when setting the same set of settings across the suite.

What I noticed when I was dealing with this issue on Mar 12 (after the latest updates), is that none of the programs, including Bridge, would keep any attempt to change settings back to what they should have been. In my case, I have a Custom set I use across the suite. After the bug, Bridge had reset to one of the built in sets, and the individual apps reset to diffrent ones.

Once I deleted the Cache file, I was able to reset to my Custom set in Bridge, and behold, all the other programs popped back to my Custom settings without even touching them individually.

I've been fine ever since, and without doing the Photoshop rollback that was suggested.

[Lukas Engqvist]

Syning colours in bridge is only really useful if you are in a closed loop workflow, or you only are working towards one output profile. I can imagine working for a publisher that only prints on one type of stock is such a case. It is a simple solution because it lets you feel you have managed colours, but if you are working towards multiple output channels and want to have paper qualities such as Coated, uncoated and newsprint you ought to be changing the colour settings throughout your day. Now if you are working to a fixed output intent once you have configured your applications you won't need to change them.

If you are using multiple channels then you may also be creating assets for multiple outputs. And that all open assets are for one channel only is unlikely… in which case you may not want to sync the applications because as you set the settings for one job you are changing the settings for other programs which may ruin another job. 

The one setting I miss in the csf for Photoshop is it does not have a Safe CMYK oprion (for CMYK preserve numbers). So by all means create the csf in Photoshop, but then open it in Illustrator and modify so you can have the CMYK preserve numbers (Pure black).

InIndesign you will want to be switching between profies matching your paper, and ought to have sRGB as the default RGB because it "s" means standard and is the correct profile to assign unassigned assets. It is also the assumed profile for RGB values from Pantone, and ought to be the base profile for brand manuals since it also is the default for office applications.

In Illustrator the situation is similar to InDesign. The problem is if you are working with technical applications sometimes you may want to prioritise problem free printing and keeping thin lines pure black, which means a CMYK safe workflow. 

In Photoshop Images with unassigned profile should be assigned sRGB, and if you need to edit in extreen Blue/Cyan converting to Adobe RGB (ECI RGB or similar) wil let you access some of the brighter colours that are printable but not within the sRGB Gamut.

Sorry for the rant… but I think the problem is that many who are picky about colour and understand colour managmet don't sync using bridge as @Laubender implied.

[xxTHExDUKExx]

Sorry but this is not an workflow issue at all.

If an open and running application simply does not keep it´s setting but switches to something different just when you switch to another app and jump back, where´s the relation to workflow? There´s none.

[Lukas Engqvist]

Both yes and no. Technically it is not what settings you are using, or how you are managing colour. But in order to find the problem you would need to trrack the workflow to find which process (most likely outside of InDesign triggers this problem). If you are syncing colour settings, InDesign is no longer managing the colours, it is some other program/service/application. Is this a problem with Bridge? Is it a problem with another software writing colour settings in a way that it cannot be parsed ot pushed to indesign in a way that it can be interpreted causing InDesign to revert to a basic setting? It is a management problem.

It is a workflow issue because you have more than one app being involved… is not that what syncig means. The hard part about finding the issue is that if profiles are being synced… there needs to be a "master" that is being followed. If InDesign loses its colour settings, the bug may be in bridge, how bridge "pushes" the synchronisation, and we may not finde the error in InDesign, but another application. (If you have worked with long documents and the book function in InDesign you will be aware of how sychronising can be a blessing and/or a curse.)

I am not trying to say it is not a problem. For the person having the issue it is a real problem… but we can only see the symptom, not the cause. To understand the cause we need to look wider. I was trying to highlight why syncing is problematic to highlight the processes involved in a production, and hoping it would help users to find the pattern that initiated the fault.

[rob day]

I never use Bridge to sync and I got the bug after the last Photoshop update.

Sync’ing in general would never cause problems with existing InDesign documents because the profiles and color management policies are assigned and saved with the document when it is created. Unless the CM Policies were set to Off on document creation, sync’ing would have no affect on existing documents—all it does is set your color management preferences for newly created documents.

The Emulate InDesign 2.0 CM Off bug does have real world consequences for existing and new documents. If you Export to PDF/X-4, you might not notice that the Standard is set to None and think everything will export correctly, but there will be no Output Intent Profile included with the PDF, and more importantly any RGB objects will have their assigned profiles stripped (with CM Off, all RGB exports as DeviceRGB) making it impossible to get an accurate, color managed conversion to CMYK on output.

[rob day]

I don’t think the bug is related to sync’ing—the latest update(s) seem to turn off CM in InDesign and Illustrator whether you sync or not.