Color change Illustrator to PDF

[KennyRohan]

Just created a graphic in Illustrator where one of the colors (the background) was Black CMYK 20-20-20-95 ... a nice black. When I saved the file as a PDF and opened it again in Photoshop, the CMYK values changed significantly. What's going on here please?

 

[eugenetyson]

You have different colour settings in illustrator and photoshop.

In Illustrator go to Edit>Colour Settings

In Photoshop go to Edit>Colour Settings

Make sure you have the same Working Spaces on.

And if you want, click the convert to Working Space on. (although not recommended if you're getting files from different sources).

When you are saving the PDF from Illustrator

go to the output field

Colour conversion > None

When opening the PDF in Photoshop

Select the Mode that the is the same as your illustrator file.

Now all your colours should be identical.

The colour settings I use are Euroscale Coated V2, as I'm in Europe, so that makes sense for me. Perhaps others could stress different settings that work in the USA etc.

 

[apepp]

...as eugenetyson states, ensure you are opening the pdf in photoshop in the sames color mode (RGB or CMYK) as created in Illustrator...

...a classic is creating your artwork in an RGB document in Illustrator and trying to apply CMYK values to it, this will do all sorts of undesirable conversions, even before you've saved the artwork from illustrator...

...when you save to pdf ensure you aren't performing a conversion to another destination profile (always have convert to destination preserve numbers enabled) otherwise the values will change...

...whether or not your color settings are different between illustrator and photoshop isn't likely the problem, with preserve numbers enabled and convert to destination to a different profile you still won't have any values changing...

Andrew

 

[apepp]

...rule of thumb is, if in doubt, preserve embedded profiles, unless you encounter RGB images that don't have embedded profiles, in this scenario you would want to apply a source profile and convert to a destination CMYK space...

...the quality of RGB conversions to CMYK is dependant on what source and destination profiles you choose, different profiles result into different color values...

...cmyk is different, as your dealing with cmyk numbers you need to preserve those numbers upon saving to pdf, whether you convert to a different destination or not...

Andrew

 

[apepp]

...when you open a cmyk image that has a differnt profile to that of your working space, always preserve the embedded profile, or in some cases remove them...

...also assigning profiles only changes image display of colors, the numbers don't change, but will once you convert to another profile...

Andrew

 

[eugenetyson]

Great tips Andrew.