RGB type layers converted to CMYK appear as 100K-only fill, but retain RGB color fill swatch applied

[David Cardillo, PRH]

This is something I haven't seen before: text layers converted to CMYK from RGB where the text retains the applied RGB swatch.

I have a series of RGB images (profile embedded) with (black) text layers. When I convert them to CMYK, the text layers convert to 100K. I check them in the Info panel and they read 0/0/0/100. I turn off the Black channel and they appear as knockout.

This is exactly the behavior I want.

However when I click on the text layers with the Text tool, the color fill they're using is still an RGB 0/0/0 fill. (85/75/60/100 in CMYK; 0/0/0/100 fill reads as 29/29/27 in RGB.)

If I open these TIFFs in Acrobat, the text is black channel only. Placed into InDesign, same behavior.

But when I open them in Illustrator, they open in RGB (no profile). I checked this by manually changing the fill in PS to 0/0/0/100 (from 85/75/60/100) and then they open just fine in CMYK as 100K fill. (And opening them in RGB, then changing the document color mode to CMYK changes all the black text to 4-color.)

I'm opening them in Illustrator because I want to preserve the live, vector text when saved as AI art. Converting PS text to AI text is an operation I've done literally hundreds of times, through batches and actions.

These files began in ClipStudio Paint. They were exported in RGB (profile embedded) as PSB. (PSB due to their quite large size preventing them from being saved as PSD.) Opened in PS and converted to GRACoL CMYK TIFF (profile embedded). The type layers at that point are all 100K fill live text. (The type layers were all updated. CSP uses a different type engine, and unfortunately updating the text layers causes them to shift position. For anyone curious.) This TIFF is just the text layers, no other art.

Nearly all of the text layers in all of these files are black text, but of course some are color. (Otherwise I'd just save as grayscale, or select all the text layers and set the fill — I'm batching all of this with actions, as there are hundreds of files.)

How are the type layers appearing as 100K fill, yet still keep their RGB fill applied?

Other info:

MacOS Monterey, 12.6.9

Adobe Photoshop ver 24.5.0 (2023)

Color Settings: synchronized via Bridge — AdobeRGB & GRACoL 2013 CMYK; Color management: RGB & CMYK "Preserve embedded profiles" (PS), CMYK "Preserve Numbers" (AI); profile mismatch: ask when opening/pasting

This is not the first time I've converted CSP files and saved them as AI files. This is just the first time I've seen this behavior where the type attributes get stuck and force the art to open in RGB in AI.

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

@David Cardillo, PRH – Sorry, I'm a little confused... If you have saved the file as a PDF, please provide a sample PDF file.

If they are TIFF, then I wouldn't expect the text layers to be available outside of Photoshop? what colour mode is the TIFF file?

This sounds more like an Illustrator forum question than Photoshop.

Screenshots or sample files are often useful to illustrate.

[David Cardillo, PRH]

Hi, @Stephen_A_Marsh, hopefully I can be a little more clear:

These are files that began in ClipStudio Paint. I'm exporting them to PSB — "B" because they're physically too large to be PSD. (one of them is 165" long at 300ppi.) They originated on an iPad so I'm saving them with the Display P3 profile embedded.

I'm then doing 2 things: converting them to CMYK (GRACoL 2013) and saving them as TIFF.

The text layers come in filled with RGB black: 0/0/0. When I convert them (ACE, Relative, blackpoint compensation, no dither) a curious thing happens: the text all becomes 100K. The info panel says 0/0/0/100. Turn off the black channel and the text disappears.

Drag these TIFFs into Acrobat (yes this rasters the text as image) and the text appears in the black channel only.

And to be clear, this is the behavior I want. Most of this process is get editable vector fonts in 100K.

Now when these TIFFs are opened in Illustrator, they come in as untagged RGB. (despite showing as embedded GRACoL in Bridge.) Some of the files open with a warning, "This document contains both RGB and CMYK color modes."

I looked at the fill swatch for the text layers: it reads 85/75/6/100 for CMYK (0/0/0 RGB) despite only appearing in the black channel and reading 0/0/0/100 in the Info panel. (0/0/0/100 CMYK is 29/29/27 in RGB.)

Two additional things: if I manually change the text color fill to 100K, then when I open them in Illustrator they open as CMYK, like they're supposed to.

If I open the RGB PSB file and save it to TIFF, prior to converting the color, then convert to CMYK, I get 4-color text.

That says to me there is text attribute ("color fill") that is not behaving as it should as the profiles are converted. It's both getting stuck with an RGB profile attached, and appearing as 100K (when rastered in Photoshop).

My assumption is probably the same as yours: there's something coded into these text layer attributes from CSP that's making them behave this way. It actually seems to work great if you're going from CLIP to PSD to PDF/plate. (But I don't want to raster the text.) This is just behavior I've not encountered before, taking CLIP > PSD > AI. (I also just upgraded my CSP from ver 1.x to 2.2.)

So, yeah, sounds like a CSP issue. Still, why can't PS write to the text attributes when changing color modes?

(The obvious fixes would be to save the text TIFFs in grayscale, or convert the file imported into AI to gray, except some of the text is color, naturally, and I'm batch processing these, not doing them one at a time.)

I'll try to attach a sample file.