Participant

Question

Indesign Mutes Bright Colors on Screen

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
December 1, 2017
6 replies
29096 views

Hey everyone, I've run into a problem with my InDesign CC 2017. Yesterday it started muting all bright colors I choose - whenever I pick a hot pink or electric green, it dulls them way down. I have never had this problem before yesterday. A few details:

-We work in CMYK, but this has never happened before when making CMYK swatches. They stay bright.

Things I've already tried that didn't work:

-Migrating previous local settings

-Resetting the program settings

-Changing transparency flattener settings

-Switching to RGB mode (colors aren't bring in RGB either)

-Changing document presets/settings

-Making sure I'm not in proof colors mode

I'm not converting anything to the working space, and this isn't an issue that relates to exporting the document or printing. This is specifically occurring during the design process in the program and I am at a loss on what it could be. I've ever checked my mac color view settings.

The only thing I can think of is that a day or two before this happened, I was having issues during printing with our printer printing discolored boxes behind anything with a drop shadow effect (which I learned is the yucky discolored box syndrome), and I fixed it by changing the transparency flattener presets. With that file, I was using Pantone uncoated spot color. However, I've removed that preset from the current design file.

Help!

This topic has been closed for replies.

K

keller132546

Participant

If you go to Edit > Color Settings... and change it to Emulate Adobe InDesign 2.0 CMS Off it seems to fix it

rob day

Community Expert

No, there would never be a reason to turn off color management. All that does is strip the document's color profiles. Turning on Overprint Preview or adding transparency to the page with a CMYK blend space, still soft proofs an RGB color as CMYK.

R

rosannev7694348

Participant

Hi all,

I am also having this issue, very strange. In the swatch panel, the RGB color looks nice and bright, but as soon as I apply it to something on the artboard, it shows CMYK-like muted. Overprint preview is turned off, fyi. When I export the PDF as an interactive PDF the color shows up correctly, so that's ok. But it's quite annoying to create digital identity proposals while looking at the 'wrong' color. Thanks for any input.

D

danielbeltran

Participant

Hi Rachael, did you ever figure this out? I'm having the same issue now. The strange thing is I'm using the same color swatch stored in my creative cloud library, so i'm not doing anything different but colors definitely appear muted.

Frans v.d. Geest

Community Expert

Oh, and also important, you said you ‘changed it to RGB’, but if the colours where in the CMYK gamut they will stay in that gamut when changed to RGB, so they do not get bright on itself: you have to change the values of that Colours to the brighter gamut of course by upping the RGB values of course ;-)

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

How are you making sure you are not in "proof colors mode"? Have you checked in View > Overprint Preview to see whether its off or on?

Mike Witherell

R

rachael9109Author

Participant

Hi Michael, yes I have checked that

Anna Lander

Inspiring

Looks like your system shows you a CMYK preview (like Proof Colors in Photoshop).

Does it happen in other programs (Photoshop, Illustrator)? If yes, the problem might be with your monitor, not InDesign.

Does RGB mode allow you to choose the NEW bright color?

Could you give a screenshot of Colour Picker&

R

rachael9109Author

Participant

Hey Anna,

No, this is not a problem with other programs, just InDesign. No, RGB does not allow me to choose a new bright color. All is muted.

You can see above it is showing two different colors, on the left.

Above is my color picker.

Anna Lander

Inspiring

check pls your View menu and Output > Separations Preview > Separations:

it's just a viewing, your real colors are the same. But Overprint Preview mode shows you how your colors will look in CMYK publishing

Derek Cross

Community Expert

CMYK has about a third less colours than RGB, so colours like bright green and bright orange won't appear bright in CMYK.

It's best to work in RGB to give you the flexibility to export your documents specifically to suit the output such as the type of printer, such as Desktop inkjet or for commercial litho, or for web.

You shouldn't use PMS spot colours unless you plan to print spot colours.

You need to calibrate your monitor to get more consistent results.

R

rachael9109Author

Participant

Hi Derek,

As mentioned, I've never had this issue with CMYK before, and I tried switching to RGB and that did not change anything either. For the last project we were printing in spot color, hence using spot color.

rob day

Community Expert

and I tried switching to RGB and that did not change anything

InDesign documents don't have a color mode—you can have a mix of RGB, Lab, or CMYK colors on the same page. If you turn on Overprint Preview RGB and Lab process colors will display as they will print on a CMYK device, using the document's CMYK profile for the soft proof.

The Swatches panel shows a Color Mode icon for each swatch. Here [Black] is CMYK and the others are RGB. If an RGB swatch is not printable the closest CMYK color is shown next to a warning triangle

Overprint Preview displays the expected output

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded