COLOR TRANSITION CONANDRUM

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
December 10, 2019
3 replies
494 views

Hey everyone, I know this is probably super basic but I don't use editorial software a lot, any help would be appreciated.

I made some color frames that I need to transition gradually through the rainbow colors but apparently Indesign doesn't have a hue slider as photoshop does so I'm having a hard time making a nice and clean transition between the colors just because I need to deal with 4 sliders (CMYK) instead of just one Hue slider and its too many variables.

any tips on how to make those transitions more accurately?

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Correct answer rob day

Hue is representd by the primary and secondary ink colors to the CMYK model, so if you want a literal rainbow for print output, set the stops up as the CMYK primary and secondary colors—0|100|100|0 (red), 0|0|100|0 (yellow), 100|0|100|0 (green), 100|0|0|0 (cyan), 100|100|0|0 (blue), 0|100|0|0 (magenta):

You can do the same with RGB—255|0|0 (red), 255|255|0 (yellow), 0|255|0 (green) etc..., but that will produce out-of-gamut color that is not printable,

rob day

Correct answer

Community Expert

Hue is representd by the primary and secondary ink colors to the CMYK model, so if you want a literal rainbow for print output, set the stops up as the CMYK primary and secondary colors—0|100|100|0 (red), 0|0|100|0 (yellow), 100|0|100|0 (green), 100|0|0|0 (cyan), 100|100|0|0 (blue), 0|100|0|0 (magenta):

You can do the same with RGB—255|0|0 (red), 255|255|0 (yellow), 0|255|0 (green) etc..., but that will produce out-of-gamut color that is not printable,

Jongware

Community Expert

Oh of course. (Slaps own head.) It also avoids any RGB->CMYK conversion artefacts -- per definition, there is no conversion of any kind here.

But you should end with the same color as you started with, as Hue is a circular model:

This has 7 stops from 0..100% so they are 16.67% apart. CMY values per position (none have any Black):

red at 0%: 0 100 100

yellow at 16.67%: 0 0 100

green at 33.33%: 100 0 100

cyan at 50%: 100 0 0

blue at 66.67%: 100 100 0

magenta at 83.33%: 0 100 0

red again at 100%: 0 100 100

J

johnatanm10161167Author

Participant

Thank you so much, I didnt get it at first but after following your instructions now it makes perfect sense, it’s just super counter intiuitive until you actually do it.