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Siobhan Harper
Participant
April 11, 2023
Question

Why are CMYK colors different in Acrobat than elsewhere?

  • April 11, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 1796 views

I have used multiple color pickers, and translated between RGB and CMYK and the colors are consistent elsewhere, but type the same values in to Acrobat and they are wrong. Are these not supposed to be universal? Communicating between my client and our design team is impossible when the colors don't translate. I added an image to illustrate the issue.

 

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3 replies

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
April 12, 2023

CMYK conversion is absolutely not universal. And all web pages offering conversion are dangerously wrong, because they pretend it is universal. The conversions depend of the CMYK and RGB profiles that you assign. 

    JR Boulay
    Community Expert
    JR BoulayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 12, 2023

    Which color management settings are you using?

    Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe
    Meenakshi Negi
    Community Manager
    Meenakshi NegiCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    April 12, 2023

    Hi Siobhan Harper,

     

    Thank you for reaching out.

     

    As mentioned above, the colors appear different when opening the file in Acrobat.

    Would you mind sharing the screenshot of the color appearance on Acrobat and other applications?

    It would be helpful to share the sample file and the PDF created. We will get this checked.

     

    Please refer to the following help document about color working spaces in Acrobat: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/color-settings.html. 

    Check if that helps.

     

    Thanks,

    Meenakshi

     

    S
    Siobhan HarperAuthor
    Participant
    April 12, 2023
    I did attach an image comparing two CMYK color pickers, one from Acrobat, and another showing the Acrobat CMYK numbers that actually match up to the desired color.
    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    April 12, 2023

    The first three are not accurate in any way. The fourth might be accurate but what are the RGB and CMYK colour spaces? And what does Acrobat display, with the same colour spaces?

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