Incorrect color being previewed on the web after exporting from Illustrator.

[definitive]

I just installed Snow Leopard over the weekend, and had to update a certain file for someone, and when I emailed it through gmail, the preview displays the color incorrectly. Here's what I mean:

First image is in Illustrator. Second is in GMail's preview under Safari and FireFox. Third image is in Gmail's view option under FireFox. Under Safari the "view" option displays the colors correctly.

1http://i29.tinypic.com/33vm9av.jpg
2http://i25.tinypic.com/34pyrld.png
3http://i25.tinypic.com/2iblssi.png

The color I have it set to under Illustrator CS4 in CMYK is 50,100,0,0. I've not done anything to tweak the color profiles (I always work with default color settings), so I'm not sure what's going on. I read that SL has a different gamma setting (that of Windows), but I've worked on Windows for years, and never had this issue come up either.

edit: after posting this and seeing what it shows up as in here, the color is completely different than what it looks like in illustrator (i'm guessing it has something to do with cmyk > rgb) conversion, but i'll say that 1 does not look the same as it does in illustrator, and that here it looks like what "view" option does in firefox. maybe i'm not using a web safe color?

[Dal123]

Could be the browsers but I'm very amatuer, don't even know what gmail is :o. Check this out: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=769060 :)

[Designer Dale]

I took a look at the same color samples in Illustrator CS3 on Leopard. The first is your cmyk split as an Exported jpg and the second is the rgb split that it converted to (145-39-143). They are quite different.

Dale

[definitive]

I took a look at the same color samples in Illustrator CS3 on Leopard. The first is your cmyk split as an Exported jpg and the second is the rgb split that it converted to (145-39-143). They are quite different.

Dale

your image on the right is the color i set up in illustrator, while the one on the left is how i have it when i export it and view it in the browser. is it a simple mistake on my part when i exported the files?

[Designer Dale]

This is what I did for the examples I have here. I labeled them to keep things straight if they don't post in order.

I created an AI CS3 cmyk doc under Leopard and cropped it with the crop tool. This allowed me use File/Export and select jpg for the file and either cmyk or rgb for the color space. The colors look the same in AI and I took screen shots of the Export setups. This is my first view of this in Safari.

Hope some of this helps.

Dale

[Designer Dale]

From the looks of this ^^^, you may be setting up in cmyk and exporting or saving without changing the color space. Illustrator is cmyk by default. You can set a new document to be rgb, but I never do that. Using the Crop Tool and File/Export will allow you to keep (at least let me) your colors as close to what you want in the first place.

Dale

[RubberChicken]

Safari is aware of colour profiles, so it will render the image similar to Illustrator or PhotoShop if the image is tagged with one. I'm not sure if this applies to images viewed in Gmail on Safari.

To check if this is the problem, save the same image without any profile. If it was the cause the image will now look "wrong" in Safari as well.

I never embed profiles for web graphics where a colour needs to match across different formats, because some image formats like GIF don't support profiles, eg a jpeg and gif of same RGB value with display differently in Safari if the Jpeg had a profile.

[Designer Dale]

I sent my test files to myself (Yahoo to G-Mail). The samples look acceptable viewed by Mail, and way different if I go directly to G-Mail to view them. Apple software handles the colors but Google does not.

It's a viewer error as noted by RubberChicken.

Dale

[Designer Dale]

I opened the rgb file in PS and saved it without a color Profile checked. It viewed in G-Mail fine. I didn't start this thread, but RC has the answer.

Dale