Comments on: InDesign’s Evil Evil Color Picker

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 16 May 2009 11:56:26 +0000

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately it came a bit too late to prevent me creating a pdf for print with colours that weren’t ‘wrong’ enough for me to notice on screen but painfully noticable in the printed product. I’d got into the habit of using the colour picker from using illustrator 9 but will avoid it at all costs now!

By: Link Photo

Link Photo — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:59:02 +0000

Thanks for the info on the color picker. I found out that In Design CS3 default colors are CMYK but if you double click on the fill or stroke icons then select a color it will default to RGB but if you select fill “one click” then click on “color” it will default to CMYK and stay that way, but only if you started that way. If you keep working by using the color picker it will remain in RGB even if you fill in the CMYK boxes. So like someone said the color picker is the dark side of In Design.

Thanks again…

By: Dave Saunders

Dave Saunders — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:04:06 +0000

1. If you want a specific CMYK mix, then all you have to do is type the numbers into the CMYK fields, but I agree that if that’s what you want there are easier ways of doing it.

2. I see what you mean about the dramatic change when you start with 100,0,0,0. Looks like there’s still work to do in that area.

So, I agree with you, for CMYK values, no longer evil but indeed rather pathetic.

Dave

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:40:20 +0000

Dave, you are technically correct, that the Color Picker isn’t quite so bad as it was, but it’s still plenty troublesome. Two examples:

I apply 100% cyan to an object, then open the color picker. If I just click OK, then all is fine in 4.05 (hooray!) but if I make even a tiny change to the color — for example, click anywhere in the color picker — the CMYK values change dramatically. Clicking in the same place as the cross hairs changes 100% value to 70c/14m.

This is because you’re basically selecting an RGB color and then ID is pushing it through an RGB-to-CMYK transform.

Example 2: Try to create a 100% cyan swatch using the color picker. Or 100% yellow. The closest I can get to solid magenta is 27% cyan/82% magenta. And, even worse, when I choose that bright magenta and click OK, it immediately changes in tone (to dark grape wine color.

Nevertheless, I agree with you that it’s no longer “evil.” I have downgraded the threat to “pathetic and irrelevant.”

By: Dave Saunders

Dave Saunders — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:19:33 +0000

Note that the 4.0.5 update fixes the color shift problem for CMYK swatches chosen using the Color Picker.

Dave

By: Will A.

Will A. — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:30:39 +0000

I like the color picker its a little quirky, but thats OK as long as I don’t have to use Quark, thank God for Indesign. Hey, if anybody from Adobe is reading these comments on this site you guys Rock! Indesign is the best thing to page layout design since the Mac was invented.

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:12:19 +0000

Hey, lookee lookee, I found an Adobe Technote on this very topic (that CMYK values in a selected object shift when you open the Color Picker): Color Picker Values Their solution: Don't do that. LOL ... seriously! It says "they're aware of the problem and are working on a fix." In the meantime, their suggested solutions are to use the Swatches or Color palette to edit CMYK colors.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:20:20 +0000

Webee: I’m not sure I understand you. Perhaps you are refering to the Eyedropper tool? Color Settings is something very different.

By: webee

webee — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:24:37 +0000

hi,in my experience, i didn’t have any problems with
color settings.
I have the impression that this tool was made for greater things:
like copping the settings of your type, drop shadow, much faster then with the character style or object style.
Don’t you think so?

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:18:24 +0000

Here's an alternate to the Color Picker that I should have mentioned: The Master Colors HVC Color Composer. I believe this replaces the color picker with something much better. I got a quick demo of it at The CS Conference in Miami and it was pretty darn cool.