Ok, so we are talking about a maximum difference of 6 color values (out of 255), with the largest difference being in color values that are close to 0. This is definitely something we should fix, but fortunately it’s not something that should cause visual differences.
I am pretty sure I understand why this happened, too…
This is a good idea, our “master” format should be a text-based format. This has a lot of advantages:
- Associated with open-source tools, not proprietary (though people can still use Illustrator if they want).
- Changes can be reviewed and managed by reading the file before/after and taking advantage of git/GitHub’s diff tools.
- Plain text formats are the best choice for long-term archival.
We’ll probably want to keep a .eps version but I think we can drop the .ai files. Thoughts on that?
We’re an online project, and when you open a CMYK PDF for viewing on a screen, it just looks wrong. People have commented on this in the past.
Also, I suspect these changed color values were caused by unwanted color conversions in the first place.
All of this is worth avoiding. We need to be sure to use RGB as our “master” color format, and I’m skeptical that we even need to provide CMYK versions. A single PDF is probably ok, but I think it might be even better to (1) not do this until we really need it, and (2) automate the conversion when we do need it.
If all of that makes sense, let’s just worry about the SVG files for now, and write a script to generate the rest of the files automatically each time the SVGs change.
Remember this? Gradient angles (funny)