Color Picker in InDesign CC 2019 Freezes Up

[jordan1229]

Has anyone else had this issue? Anytime I want to use the color picker to grab a color from an outside image or what-have-you and it just won't do anything? In my experience, it does this 90% of the time and after it won't do anything the window just freezes and I can't even close out of it. I have reset my preferences and it worked for a day then it started doing it again.

Is this a bug? if so, when is going to get fixed? It's really annoying.

If it's useful information, I am on a Mac.

[Steve Werner]

What Mac version are you running?

[jordan1229]

It's running High Sierra 10.13.6

[Steve Werner]

Let's make sure exactly what you're doing. I would double-click the Fill box at the bottom of the tools to bring up the Color Picker. If I'm in RGB mode (as shown below), you can click the Eyedropper tool (circled). Holding it down I can move outside of InDesign's window to pick up color from another application or the Finder (I chose Photoshop).

Is this what you're doing? Does this happen every time? It's always worked for me (macOS 10.14.2, InDesign CC 2019.0.1)

Have you applied the October update to CC 2019.0.1 (14.0.1)?

[jordan1229]

Yes, that is exactly how I am doing and how I have always done it. It does nothing, then the window freezes up. I am unable to hit 'cancel' or 'OK'. I either have to wait awhile or FORCE QUITE InDesign.

EDIT: Yes, my InDesign is up-to-date.

[Steve Werner]

Is this happening in one file, or in all files? If it's one file, the file could be corrupted.

You said you reset your preferences. There are at least two methods of doing that which are described below. Which did you use? The keyboard method after quitting InDesign and relaunching? Or removing the files described below?

Set preferences in Adobe InDesign

[jordan1229]

It's happening in every file. And I actually called Adobe Customer Service for this issue and they were the ones who reset my preferences... I am unsure which one they did.

[Steve Werner · Accepted solution]

Outside chance: Because you're dragging from one application to another to do the sampling, it could be a Finder issue (something in your Mac system). You could try launching from another user (if necessary, set up another one in System Preferences > Users & Groups). Launch InDesign in your new clean user and retry the same thing there. If you're an admin user, you should be able to run InDesign from another user space.

[jordan1229]

Okay, so that actually did work!

Very interesting....

Would that mean I would have to completely reset my Mac and start all over?

[Steve Werner]

Well, probably not necessarily right away. You found the workaround for that particular problem which is to switch to the other user to sample the color. But if you're like most Mac users, you probably haven't done a "clean install" of an operating system for a very long time. Usually we just do the default, which is to apply an OS update to the next version on top of what's already installed. That means that corruption can continue and never get fixed.

So eventually you need to do a clean install. Do a Google search on "macintosh operating system clean install" and you can get directions for doing a clean install easily, like this one:

How to Run a Clean Install of macOS Sierra 10.12

Or this one:

How to do a clean install of macOS Mojave | iMorehttps://www.imore.com/how-do-clean-install-macos

[Damarco4u]

This is not a Mac problem. This is an After Effects problem. Against my will, I am on a PC at work.  Three times I have tried to use the eye dropper and three times it crashed. I rebooted the computer after the second time, thinking it might be a memory or resources issue but clearly it was not. This is a glitch that Adobe is going to have to fix.