Adobe Illustrator - Trying desperately to get colors to match in exported file.

Author

Trying desperately to get colors to match in exported file.

Arvo

2005-06-09, 7:15 pm

I drew and colored a lot of comic strips in Flash MX, but I drew them
too big for displaying on the web, and so I needed to export them to
Adobe Illustrator format in order to resize them properly in
Illustrator before making GIFs from them (you can't scale strokes in
Flash and that makes resizing in Flash difficult)

But when I exported the AI file from Flash and opened it in Illustrator
9.0, I found that the colors did not match my original colors.

Experimenting, I found that by changing the Color Settings in AI, the
colors change quite a bit. But there are so many different color
settings, I don't know which ones to use.

I experimented with the settings, and eventually found some settings
that gave me close to the colors I had. But then when you choose "Save
for Web" the colors all change again! And in that dialog box you have
still more choices -- original, optimized, etc.

I haven't found any setting that gives my drawings the original colors
they had in Flash MX.

I just want to resize my drawings and keep my original colors. I know
very little about Illustrator, except how to resize!

I would be very grateful if someone would explain to me how to get my
original colors in this file so I can end up with a GIF that is colored
as I conceived it.

Nicholas Sherlock

2005-06-09, 7:15 pm

Arvo wrote:
> But when I exported the AI file from Flash and opened it in Illustrator
> 9.0, I found that the colors did not match my original colors.

Make sure that you export with RGB, not CMYK as your colour space. In
Illustrator color settings, set it to "Color management off".

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

steggy

2005-06-09, 7:15 pm

Nicholas Sherlock wrote:
>
> Arvo wrote:
>
> Make sure that you export with RGB, not CMYK as your colour space. In
> Illustrator color settings, set it to "Color management off".
>
> Cheers,
> Nicholas Sherlock

Yes and make sure your Color Management settings in
Illustrator are the same as those in Flash (if there are any
there, no clue)
--
steg

Arvo

2005-06-10, 7:17 am

Thanks Nicholas and Steg. I tried your suggestion, but the colors are
still off.

One confusing thing is that when I start Illustrator by double clicking
this file, Illustrator prompts me to choose whether to turn color
management on. I tell it no, but then when you choose color settings in
the program, it still is on!

But I turned it off in both places. When I chose Save For Web I had to
make more choices: original vs. optimized, whether to dither or not,
and if so what kind of dither...whatever I chose, the colors were off.

Let me ask you something. I experimented yesterday by exporting the
drawing from Flash as a GIF rather than AI.

Then I resampled/resized the GIF down in Irfanview. To my surprise,
the resized GIF looked fine. There weren't any obvious differences in
quality from the same GIF drawing exported from AI (except for the
colors being off, I mean)

Since the GIF exported directly from Flash keeps the colors accurate,
is this a good way to resize my strips to make them smaller? I had
thought that when you do this in a bitmap program, you lose quality if
you resize the GIF. But I can't see any noticeable quality loss.

What do you think?

steggy

2005-06-10, 7:20 pm

Arvo wrote:
>
> Thanks Nicholas and Steg. I tried your suggestion, but the colors are
> still off.
>
> One confusing thing is that when I start Illustrator by double clicking
> this file, Illustrator prompts me to choose whether to turn color
> management on. I tell it no, but then when you choose color settings in
> the program, it still is on!
>
> But I turned it off in both places. When I chose Save For Web I had to
> make more choices: original vs. optimized, whether to dither or not,
> and if so what kind of dither...whatever I chose, the colors were off.
>
> Let me ask you something. I experimented yesterday by exporting the
> drawing from Flash as a GIF rather than AI.
>
> Then I resampled/resized the GIF down in Irfanview. To my surprise,
> the resized GIF looked fine. There weren't any obvious differences in
> quality from the same GIF drawing exported from AI (except for the
> colors being off, I mean)
>
> Since the GIF exported directly from Flash keeps the colors accurate,
> is this a good way to resize my strips to make them smaller? I had
> thought that when you do this in a bitmap program, you lose quality if
> you resize the GIF. But I can't see any noticeable quality loss.
>
> What do you think?

I think that is the way to go. You use the mage for screen
anyway, no problems what so ever when it comes down to resolution.
--
steg