what happened to white??

[meljg]

hi all,

somehow i changed my "white" swatch to lavender (of all colors!). how do i change it back? i've tried selecting white from the color wheel (or whatever it's called) but it's not working. and it seems to have changed globally, cause i can't find white in any of the different swatches...

if all esle fails, anyone know how to restore the factory defaults? or do i have to reinstall illustrator?

thanks in advance,
mel

 

[vakohles]

Go to Window > Swatch Libraries > Default CMYK (or RGB depending).

 

[meljg]

nope. tried that..... white has officially be changed to lavender. i think i somehow "replaced" white with this color and so white has been globally changed in all palettes. any other suggestions? anyone?

 

[itchybug]

Mel:

Go to the following location (or similar in versions other than CS):

C:\Program Files\adobe\Illustrator CS\Plug-ins

There are 2 files there (among others), called:

Adobe Illustrator Startup_CMYK.ai

and

Adobe Illustrator Startup_RGB.ai

These are the startup files that are used as blank "templates" when you start a new file, and they also store their own color palettes. Create a folder elsewhere and drop a copy of each file in there for backup. Now, open each of those files, change the swatch to white (double-click it, and adjust the sliders to 0,0,0,0 for CMYK and FF,FF,FF or 255,255,255 for RGB. Save each.

Close Illustrator.

Start Illustrator, and see if you still get the Lavender.

If that didn't fix it, look at it this way, it could have been Chartreuse, so Lavender isn't THAT bad...(Kidding).

Another possibility is to delete the aiprefs file (do a system search for a file called aiprefs, no extension, enable search for hidden and system files. This will restore Illustrator to factory defaults upon the next launch. This deletion MUST BE DONE WHILE ILLUSTRATOR IS CLOSED or it won't work.

If any of those suggestions don't work, check back, we'll tackle it one way or another.

HTH

Bert

Bert Philippus -

http://www.itchybug.com

 

[itchybug]

Mel:

I forgot, and darn it they really need an edit option in this forum, reinstalling will NOT restore the aiprefs if they are corrupted, and in fact, IME reinstalling rarely fixes this kind of thing.

Bert

Bert Philippus -

http://www.itchybug.com

 

[itchybug]

Mel:

Whatever happened, did you get the issue resolved?

Bert

Bert Philippus -

http://www.itchybug.com

 

[meljg]

hey bert,

thanks for the help, option 2 was the winner. i must say, it was nice to come back to the office today (out yesterday) to find that my problem was solved and i can actually be productive today. but maybe that's not a good thing after all, i mean it is friday....

thanks again,
mel

p.s. and wouldn't you know that this was the one illustrator question our mac sys admin could have answered and i didn't bother asking cause he's never been able to help me with illustrator in the past..... i'm lucky like that.

 

[itchybug]

Well thank God for me...

Bert Philippus -

http://www.itchybug.com