Eyedropper Issue - InDesign CS3

[r mutt]

Hello -

I am at wit's end - help!!!

I have placed an RGB image into my document. I am trying to select a color in the image using the eyedropper - it always selects gray, no color! I have edited the eyedropper menu to select ONLY the 'Fill Settings/Color & Tint' - all 400 other choices are turned off. I have held shift and selcted the color I want - still gray. There must be something simple I am missing here? The image appears as color, is linked as an RGB image...I am in need of expertise beyond my own. Any ideas?

Thanks

[eugenetyson]

All you're doing there is selecting the fill colour of the Frame, not the colour of the image.

Using the eyedropper on an image isn't very accurate because indesign only places a thumbnail version of the image for layout purposes, but uses the real image on export or print.

If you want the colour value from the image it would be better to open the image in Photoshop and use the eyedropper there, take a note of the colour values there and add a Swatch to indesign using those colour values.

[CatintheHat1]

If you embed the image the eyedropper works better, however, last night I discovered that for a perfect match I had to go 1 less on the C (in CMYK). The PS image had a 10 value, but it did equate to a 9 in InDesign CS4. Weird. I always just do it manually, too. The only time I use the eyedropper in ID is if it doesn't matter really what shade the color is.

[eugenetyson]

It really depends on what your colour settings are and your colour management policies are and what colour profile is set to in the image and how you have set InDesign to handle colour profiles.

That said, the image that you're shown in InDesign is not the real image. So it's always best to get a reading from the actual program you edit files in, be it corel, photoshop, illustrator or whatever.