Library displaying all color swatches in grayscale

[Philip Muller]

I'd like to know why this is happening. I was recently creating color swatches and saving them to my swatch panel. I had "add to my current library checked" so duplicates went into the library.

I'm glad I have the swatches in there. However, they all appear in the panel in grayscale. They work normally when I apply the color to anything but I can't find the cause of them appearing in grayscale. When I view them in the assets library online, they appear in color. 

I'm using the latest version of Photoshop on a MacBook Pro 2021, Apple M1 Max processor, MacOs 12.1 Montery

As seen in Ps:

As seen online:

[Barry Rudick]

Usually that would imply that the document is in Grayscale space. Try going to Image, Mode and see if that is so.

[Philip Muller]

The document is in RGB mode. When I use the swatches in the document, they apply color in the image as one would expect. Only this library in appearing in grayscale. I thought perhaps having "neutral color mode" checked in my interface settings would cause this but it has no affect on the appearance of the library.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

These are Pantone TCX colors. Pantone is no longer natively supported in Adobe products. See here for workarounds:

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/pantone-plus.html

[Philip Muller]

These are just named after the TPG colors, but this isn't a compatibility issue. I'm not working out of a legacy color book. I'm pasting in the hex code and saving the color swatch, so I don't think this would cause any issue.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

But it appears you've named them the exact name of the TCX swatch. Wondering if it's registering still as a Pantone color even though you've made these by hand. 

[Philip Muller]

I made another simple red color and added it to the library as Swatch 1. This showed up in color. I followed the same process as before, but I'm on a different computer and I didn't give it a Pantone name.

I chose "get info" for this red and one of the gray colors and noticed the ones in gray have two sets of RGB values. The second set with equal values is clearly causing it to appear in gray, but I don't know what the origin of this RGB value is. If anyone knows that origin, it might help me to make a simple change to eliminate it. I just don't know what that would be. Thanks for the suggestions, Kevin.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Woodbine 18-0538 is another TCX color. Don't name your swatches with the pantone numbers!

[Philip Muller]

Woodbine is the name of the color I'm adding to the library. Can you give a reason why? Please don't yell. 

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Hi @Philip Muller - I wasn't yelling. All caps would be yelling. 🙂

The Woodbine swatch you are showing is reading as an actual Pantone spot color.

What you are seeing the Pantone RGB values 130,133,62 and the preview color gray that it is showing (130,130,130).

Pantone is no longer supported in Adobe Creative Cloud. Your existing Pantone spot color swatches will present as gray until you rebuild, reassign or convert them to another swatch.

[Mohammad.Harb]

Did you try singing out from creative cloud apps, restart your mac and trying again ?

if that doesnt work, you may try resetting the preferences settings 

[esurrey]

I'm currently having the same issue. I'm in RGB mode and I'm selecting from the picker and adding to my CC library. I wasn't having any problems until I tried adding a new color and the swatch appeared grayed out. If I try to use the color it doesn't appear grayed out at all. I've also noticed that when I close Photoshop the swatch moves out of the folder it was originally in. It also doesn't appear in the Creative Cloud App. The selected swatch should be a burnt sienna color.