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ZPHiNX
Participant
August 26, 2021
Answered

Picking RGB colour from images

  • August 26, 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 1735 views

Hi all. I come from working with Illustrator and Photoshop, but I’m now working with InDesign also.
Please see the image at this link: https://imgur.com/a/ZgTDR8d
 
I’m working with RGB, and these graphics are for the web.
 
I’m looking to use the blue from the right-hand side (this is an image) to fill the vector rectangle on the left. I’ve used the colour picker and selected the colour 71,166,248 from the image as you can see. However, when viewing both overlapped the colours are different, I can also see from reopening the colour picker that although the colour is set to 71,166,248, it is shown as 95,166,241.
 
I can’t get my head around why InDesign is able to display the colour on the right-hand side the same as Chrome does (for example), but I’m not able to select the colour with the eye dropper to fill a shape!
Hopefully this is a simple setting tweak or similar..
Thanks.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer rob day

It looks like you are trying to use the eyedropper inside of the Color Picker? With your mouse button down, it samples color from anywhere on your screen and is picking up monitor RGB, which wouldn’t likely match your document’s RGB profile assignment (sRGB?):

 

 

If you want to pickup color from an image or native ID element, don’t use the Color Picker. Select the object you want to fill and use the Eyedropper tool in the Tools panel to sample the source color:

 

 

 

4 replies

rob day
Community Expert
rob dayCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 26, 2021

Also rereading your post I see that you are sampling a placed image. If you are using the Tool panel’s eyedropper tool, make sure that the placed image’s embedded profile listed in the Links panel matches your InDesign document’s assigned profile.

 

Here I get a mismatch because the image I am sampling has AdobeRGB embedded, and the document has sRGB assigned:

 

    Brad @ Roaring Mouse
    Community Expert
    Brad @ Roaring MouseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 26, 2021

    That's probably a good thing to see, actually. For if their intent is to ultimately output to web graphics, with the usually assumed sRGB, then showing how even some RGB colour will change will be beneficial (assuming good Colour Settings and properly selected Document intent)

    rob day
    Community Expert
    rob dayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 26, 2021

    Hi @Brad @ Roaring Mouse ,  it’s not clear to me which eyedropper @ZPHiNX  is using, but in my example using the Eyedropper Tool to sample an image, the Color Settings don’t come into play because the InDesign document’s RGB color appearance is managed by its assigned profile (not the Color Setting’s RGB profile, which could be different). And the appearance of the placed image, that I’m sampling from is managed by its embedded profile, which could also be different.

     

    I can resolve the mismatch by overriding the embedded profile via Object>Image Color Settings to match the document RGB profile

     

     

    Or by matching the document assignment to the image’s embedded profile:

     

      rob day
      Community Expert
      rob dayCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
      Community Expert
      August 26, 2021

      It looks like you are trying to use the eyedropper inside of the Color Picker? With your mouse button down, it samples color from anywhere on your screen and is picking up monitor RGB, which wouldn’t likely match your document’s RGB profile assignment (sRGB?):

       

       

      If you want to pickup color from an image or native ID element, don’t use the Color Picker. Select the object you want to fill and use the Eyedropper tool in the Tools panel to sample the source color:

       

       

       

        Brad @ Roaring Mouse
        Community Expert
        Brad @ Roaring MouseCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        August 26, 2021

        If you are working with the Color Theme Tool picker, it has a few options (Double-click on the Tool): the default is to convert to colors that work in your intended output (Your "Intent" is set when you create a new document, but can be changed anytime by going back to Document Setup).

         

         

          T
          Test Screen Name
          Legend
          August 26, 2021

          What is your RGB profile in your colour settings? What is your transparency blend space? (Let us know if you need help finding out either of these).

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