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shutch23
Participating Frequently
June 27, 2023
Question

HELP - CMYK Swatches Changed Unknowingly Before Print

  • June 27, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 494 views

Looking for some feed back from this community on an isolated issue I experienced with all CMYK swatches in a document I was working on. At somepoint during packaging and prepping for print all the CMYK swatches in the document changed to a  slightly different value with decimal points - almost as if they were converted to RGB and then back again. Example: 0/74/100/0 changed to 0/72.157/87.059/0

 

I've worked on and printed large files for 15 years and have never experienced this issue before and am at a loss to what happened. I verified that the document intent is Print and that this wasn't accidently changed to Web at any point during design or packaging. I checked any settings in Export that may be responsible but all are settings I would norally select.

 

Has anyone else experience this issue? 

 

Thanks for any guidance you can provide.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

rob day
Community Expert
rob dayCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 27, 2023

Hi @shutch23 , Do you mean the values you view in InDesign’s Swatch Options changed, or the CMYK values don’t match in the Exported PDF?

 

If the InDesign Swatches changed that could be caused by a CMYK Color Management Policy that was set to Convert to Working Space when the document was created—keep in mind that the Color Management Policies used for an existing document are saved with the document on creation. The document Swatch values could also be changed via Edit>Convert to Profile...

 

If the document swatch values are correct in InDesign, but are getting converted on an Export or showing as different values in AcrobatPro, there are a number of ways that could happen. Choosing a Destination profile that conflicts with the Document CMYK profile would do it. Also, if you included a CMYK profile in the Export>Output tab and view the document in Acrobat’s Output Preview with the Simulation Profile set to something other than the embedded profile you would get different numbers. The solution for both of those problems is to Export using a PDF/X Standard preset with the Destination Profile set to Document CMYK.

S
shutch23Author
Participating Frequently
June 27, 2023

Thanks @rob day - I mean the ID swatch options changed in the working file. 

Robert at ID-Tasker
Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
June 27, 2023

Not sure if it helps or resolve the problem - but worth trying, just in case - what if you try IDMLing? Export your INDD file as IDML, then open it and save with a new name. Maybe file got corrupted? How often are you doing Save As with a new name - "housekeeping"? 

 

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