Why are my colours dulled in indesign?

[Garethi]

Hi team.

I guess this is something to do with my colour set up.

basically I am in the process of creating some simple one colour graphics in illustrator. And in illustrator they look just how I want nice and vibrant.

However once I place them into indesign they look dull and lifeless. This would not bother me except when I export to PDF from indeisgn that dull lifeless image is carried to the PDF.

If I PDF from illustrator it looks just how I want.

Frustratingly in the links panel of indesign that same great colour is there but I cannot for the life of me work out why in the document it looks dull and int he PDF too, I really need help on this as its for a tender which needs to be in by the end of the weekend.

To clarify I am not worried so much about absolute colour correction, i.e. calibrating screens etc, my problem is illustrator looks great, indesign looks dull.

[rob day]

I see, that might work, haven't tried it, just make and re-import the PDF without flattening into PNG. Would that still flatten it into a single image which wouldn't cause the re-drawing issues when the pages are loading in the platform?

What do you mean by platform and re-drawing? Re-drawing in InDesign or is a problem with exported SWFs in a browser? When you place a PDF in ID it is previewed as one object.

[Guest]

The platform is something which has been developed in house by the digital department for interactive white boards. Components which are basically digital versions of printed books, re-using the book assets, with some games and animation etc added.

When the PDF pages are supplied they use PDF to SWF conversation and add those swf in on a 'layer', in this case the background, as essentially a static image, which will load in one go. The answers, buttons and any interactive elements are provided separately in flash files.

The 're-drawing' issue is when elements on the background layer are loading separately when a page is loaded or closed, there is some fade in and out, and layered vectors display transparency issues when loading, and in some cases pages not loading at all when there are a large amount of artwork elements on a page.

There is no real reason why the flattened images need to be PNG, that's what was asked for but I think I'll use TIFF now, get around the CM problems. I do need a solution where I can cut down the steps needed to proved these assets as it's taking so long.

[rob day]

I don't see why PDF wouldn't work. I just did a quick test placing a complex PDF/x and one native ID object on a page and exported it as an FLA. When I open the FLA the spread's movie clip asset has two objects—the PDF as a bitmap and the ID object, so there shouldn't be a problem tweening the PDF bitmap object in and out.

[shannonh69896127]

I never thought about creating a new InDesign document and copying and pasting... but in the end I had spent hours trying to fix it and it took 20 minutes to copy and paste. Maybe that's the solution, for now.

[Guest]

thanks everyone for contributing to this thread, it solved the problem for me. i had bright photos dulled in indesign but bright in the pdf export. and yes indesign was set to cmyk and came up brilliant when i changed it to rgb.

[Speedsoft]

Whenever I have a page that has a PNG file in it, it dulls all of the graphics on that page. It prints normally and exports to PDF normally.

Using original JPGs or other formats resolves this problem. No switching transparency blend space or RGB/CMYK is necessary.

Hope this helps!

[ilovepixels]

I just experience something the same - dull colours on one or two pages of a document but not on others and it had me pulling my hair out.

After much fiddling and asking a colleague if they'd had the same issues, I then looked at all the elements on the offending pages and it ended up being there were 2 objects one was text and one was a vector and both had drop shadows on them which when removed, the image that had been really dull became as bright as the original photoshop file I had used!

I don't think I've had this occur before - has anyone else?

[rob day]

That's expected behavior. When there's any transparent object ( like a drop shadow) on the page, the page's colors are displayed in the chosen Transparency Blend space. The default is CMYK, but you can set it to RGB.

[candicec98466888]

Sooooo- i had the same issue so i just removed all PNG images off the page and the colours came back!!! Still doesnt answer how to resolve it or why its freaking out!

[Test Screen Name]

Sounds normal. Did you check your transparency blend space?

[candicec98466888]

Literally had read this in the other comments and didn't know what it meant- just looked it up in help and you were dead on!! Changed the blend space to RGB and we are back in business!! Thank you!

[monkeybenslater]

Thank you Test Screen Name - that solve my problem too - legend

[rymdrum]

Hi there!

I had the same problem and now, after weeks I finally solved the problem. For me at least.
I clicked Window > Color > Color and then chose RGB in the right corner of that color window and then poof I had bright colors again. 

Have you solved your problem yet? 

Edit: sorry, saw this post was 10 years old haha. my bad. Maybe it will help someone 😉 

[rob day]

An RGB color might still get previewed as it would output to a CMYK device when Overprint is turned on, or there is any transparent object on the page, with the blend space set to CMYK:

[alkowskii]

You just saved me from my 7th rage attack of the day. You are a genius & I appreciate you ❤️ 

[defaultklmf9vhsgkka]

My situation is that indesign covert into pdf, everything in pdf looks black only,there is no color in the pdf. Afterwards,

I have undated my acrobat reader,than everything looks fine now~