Preview Color Management Issue - pasted image assigned Adobe RGB

I often layout web elements in InDesign as my composition tool, then copy/paste into Photoshop as a smart object to then generate web optimised images. It's just easier than using photoshop. Trouble is, in recent versions Adobe have stuffed up the anti-aliasing engine and now when rasterising a PDF or pasting an image from elsewhere as a smart object any image portion of that asset is no longer anti-aliased. You really don't notice if the original image placed in InDesign is say double or more that resolution of the end product web version, the scaling hides the issue. But if they are closer in actual size really visible faceting occurs. Long story… anyway I decided to investigate Apple's Preview application as a gateway for the rasterising instead of photoshop. It does do a good job on resampling the pasted asset, but on saving this out and checking in Photoshop I note that Preview has assigned the processed image the Adobe RGB profile. The same if I open the InDesign PDF and export as an image to my required size. My colour workflow is sRGB. InDesign and Photoshop are both setup this way, the image placed in InDesign also has sRGB profile, the PDF has sRGB profile. If I copy and paste between InDesign and Photoshop they are both aware of the colour space of the pasted asset and will warn me if different than the target document. I have no idea where Preview is getting Adobe RGB from, I can see no place in the app to change this as a preference, and at any rate it seems very strange to be a default when most people would not use it.

Posted on Aug 16, 2016 11:40 PM

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5 replies

Aug 17, 2016 12:54 AM in response to Eau Rouge

Thanks very much for the info but that's not quite addressing my situation. Those options are unavailable when pasting from InDesign. Looking further the clipboard format out of InDesign is PDF, and if you copy and switch to preview and do new document it creates a fresh PDF with the copied image at the size of the InDesign asset. But it looks like no profile is assigned and you cannot assign one, but on saving it from there as a Jpeg it then embeds Adobe RGB. Likewise if I open into Preview a PDF of the same thing generated by InDesign, it does not see a profile or allow assigning one. So I think the issue is with PDFs. If I copy the pasted graphic from Photoshop (still a smart object) it pastes into Preview with sRGB profile as you would expect. So I would say preview is not going to suit my needs here, however I would still love to know where it is getting Adobe RGB from for the issue above.

Aug 17, 2016 4:40 AM in response to Angus Hume

Since Preview is not going to work out for you, I suggest that you take a closer look at the Affinity Designer trial. It too has New from Clipboard, and unlike Preview, honors the incoming color space. You may even find it a replacement for Photoshop.


You can export as Photoshop, or Press-ready PDF 1.7 (uses its own, not Apple PDF library), as well as many other industry standard image formats.


I own Affinity Designer, and in no way receive any compensation, or favor in its recommendation. Unlike Adobe, not subscription-ware.

Aug 17, 2016 4:49 AM in response to VikingOSX

I actually downloaded the trial for Infinity Photo after my last post. It works very well for this. So good tip but I'm already on it :-) Been watching this and Designer for some time. Both look good and excellent value. Certainly a small expense to at least supplement Creative Cloud. Mind you I've been on Photoshop and InDesign since their version 1's, so fairly ingrained at this point.

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Preview Color Management Issue - pasted image assigned Adobe RGB

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