Saving Illustrator file as PDF washes out colors and loses outer glow

[Carly Moore]

I’ve been dealing with the same issue and this has worked for me:

Open whatever file you’re working with FIRST in Photoshop. When finished, save as PDF and in the Output setting for Color Conversion, choose ‘Convert to Destination’ as well as ‘Include Destination Profile’ for the Profile Inclusion Policy. It has worked for Adobe PDF Preset set as (High Quality Print, Modified).

Then open this saved pdf in your Adobe Illustrator and the color profiles should remain unchanged when saved as a pdf through ai.

Hope this helps!