White swatch is gray

[m***@adobeforums.com]

Hi there,

I've noticed that Illustrator CS4 displays the white swatch as gray in swatches palette. The unfortunate thing is that when I place the Illustrator file that has white in the art into InDesign, everything that is colored white appears gray. The problem is that I work in a print shop where we proof things via PDF on screen to some customers. When I produce a PDF out of InDesign with said placed art, white appears gray. Naturally my customers start asking why their job is printing gray instead of white.

My question is if there is any way to disable this appearance of white in the process so I end up with an accurate PDF? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[W***@adobeforums.com]

You must be selecting the lightest gray from the default built in gray color group which i not white.

The white swatch is at the top of the swatches panel. Third from the left.

[Super Awesome]

I have the same problem. I use white, pure white, but the swatch in Illustrator looks grey. In the file it still looks white, until I print or convert to a PDF. Then everything that is white turns grey. i am in Illustrator CS3. I am grabbing PURE WHITE, but then it alwasy converts to light grey. Same thing with the blacks, they convert to lighter black. Please help.

[B***@adobeforums.com]

Is the original Illustrator document CMYK, or RGB? If CMYK, what color profile are you using in Illustrator?

[W***@adobeforums.com]

Forget it all just trash your preferences.

[m***@adobeforums.com]

Hi Wade,

Trashing the preferences seems to have done away with the gray/white swatch. Thanks! In regard to your previous suggestion, I'm 100% sure it was the white swatch I was selecting. The white swatch appeared gray both in the color palette when all CMYK sliders were set to zero, and when I opened the Default CMYK swatches palette. Also, any object I drew had an ever so slight gray cast in Illustrator and PDFs.

It's as if I toggled on some appearance of white setting that is similar to the options for appearance of black. Being of the nature I am, even though the preference trashing seems to have fixed it I would still like to know what setting made the difference.

Thanks for all the help, everyone.

[Super Awesome]

That didnt work for me. I kept deleting the prefs file but the swatch would always be grey.

I took the prefs file from another user and replaced mine with it - that worked. So all is well now.

thanks for the help!!