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Question

RGB Color Space to CMYK Color Space view

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
February 19, 2010
4 replies
61596 views

Hi friends,

I and my friend have this doubt for a long time. When we open Color picker window by clicking the fill/stroke in tools palette, we see this RGB Color Space view.

But we use indesign for print production and we need to know how to change this RGB Color Space view to CMYK Color space. So that we need not convert RGB values to CMYK percentages.

How to

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Awesome_sincerity1587

Participating Frequently

I have no idea if this is the same question or not. I'm very confused. But What I have in the COLOR PICKER PANEL (see image 1, below) is the RGB COLOR SPACE VIEW.

What I want is what I use in Illustrator and Photoshop (image 2, below). I cant figure out what it is (all it says if foreground or background depending on which you've chosen.

I've tried fiddling with COLOR SETTINGS, ASSIGN PROFILES, CONVERT TO PROFILE, and I've searched in INDESSIGN PREFERENCES, WORKSPACES, and ADDITIONAL COLOR TOOLS in various windows.

This is making me crazy and I don't think it's always been like this. It is either something I accidently set as a keyboard command or it's in the latest upgrade...

I've searched Adobe Help and Google...This has GOT to be something that is consistent across them. I don't use Bridge, could it be something there?

HELP!!!

rob day

Community Expert

This is making me crazy and I don't think it's always been like this. It is either something I accidently set as a keyboard command or it's in the latest upgrade

It’s nothing you changed, InDesign has never had the HSB color fields.

M

mohorrigan

Participant

When you go to "File" "New" to open a new document, be sure to select "print" instead of "web" from the drop down menu. Then your color palette will show CMYK color space swatches. If you select "web" when opening a new document, you get the RGB palette. It's Adobe acting like Microsoft and trying to outsmart you by making decisions for you.

Message was edited by: mohorrigan

P

peterarthurHA

Participant

This is actually false, in CC 2017.0. Creating a new print document, then double-clicking on the Fill color selector brings up the RGB Color Swatch View dialogue.

Why is RGB Color Swatch View the immovable default for InDesign print documents? Definite oversight by the dev team.

rob day

Community Expert

Why is RGB Color Swatch View the immovable default for InDesign print documents? Definite oversight by the dev team.

I think you are confusing the Tool panel's Color Picker with the Swatches panel. You can customize the Swatch panel's default swatches by editing the panel without any documents open. The panel can have a mix of Lab, RGB, or CMYK swatches. If you create a Print Intent document, the mixed swatches will remain unchanged. If you create a Web Intent document, the default swatches will all initially be converted to RGB, but you can still edit or add new swatches with CMYK or RGB modes once the web intent doc is open.

Here are my defaults after opening a Print Intent doc. The icons in the right column indicate the swatches' color space—the first two are Lab and RGB the others are CMYK:

After opening a Web intent doc they are all RGB:

The Tool panel's Color Picker is, as its name implies, only a color picker, and the picker's selection color fields can either be RGB or Lab. After you have made your selection, the mode of the color or swatch you get depends where your cursor is.

Cursor in a CMYK field and you get Add CMYK Swatch:

In a Lab field you get Add Lab Swatch

Peter Spier

Community Expert

The ID color picker is strictly a RGB tool (other than being able to create a CMYK or Lab "equivalent" swatch, which inthe case of CMYK porbably won't be very close most of the time due to gamut restrictions), and is a very dangerous place for you to go when working in CMYK. Besides not showing the muting of out-of-gamut choices, should you have someting selected with a cmyk swatch or spot color applied, open the color picker and say OK to exit without creating a new CMYK swatch (something you might do instead of hitting Cancel), your selected object will be converted to RGB.

You really should try to get used to using the Color Panel, or even the Swatches Panel, until a real CMYK color picker is added. I use the CMYK ramp to get close, then use the sliders to fine-tune CMYK colors.

Make a feature request at Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

rob day

Community Expert

P Spier wrote:
The ID color picker is strictly a RGB tool (other than being able to create a CMYK or Lab "equivalent" swatch, which inthe case of CMYK porbably won't be very close most of the time due to gamut restrictions), and is a very dangerous place for you to go when working in CMYK.

As long as you leave your cursor in one of the CMYK fields when you click OK or Add CMYK Swatch, the Color Picker lets you spec any CMYK build. While you don't get visual gamut clipping in the color picker field (if you are picking from the field), the swatch or color is brought into gamut when you click OK.

The Color Picker does let you convert built CMYK colors via color management, which isn't easily accomplished elsewhere. If you want the CMY equivalent of 10% K based on your CM settings, you can get it by building 10% K as 0|0|0|10 then clicking on the cursor in the color field. Or you could easily get a legal version of a color that exceeds a total ink limit, something like 100|100|60|60 in the same way.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

rob day wrote:
P Spier wrote:
The ID color picker is strictly a RGB tool (other than being able to create a CMYK or Lab "equivalent" swatch, which inthe case of CMYK porbably won't be very close most of the time due to gamut restrictions), and is a very dangerous place for you to go when working in CMYK.
As long as you leave your cursor in one of the CMYK fields when you click OK or Add CMYK Swatch, the Color Picker lets you spec any CMYK build. While you don't get visual gamut clipping in the color picker field (if you are picking from the field), the swatch or color is brought into gamut when you click OK.
The Color Picker does let you convert built CMYK colors via color management, which isn't easily accomplished elsewhere. If you want the CMY equivalent of 10% K based on your CM settings, you can get it by building 10% K as 0|0|0|10 then clicking on the cursor in the color field. Or you could easily get a legal version of a color that exceeds a total ink limit, something like 100|100|60|60 in the same way.

My point about the danger is that your cursor is NOT going to be in a CMYK field unless you put it there intentionally. Properly used, I'm sure Color Picker can be very valuable, but I don't hink it can do anything that can't be accomplished in other ways, and I've seen too many files with destroyed spots and what people thought were matching CMYK mixes where one object was converted accidentally to RGB to think the Color Picker is a worthwhile tool.

Petteri_Paananen

Inspiring

I don´t know if it´s possible...

why don´t you mix your CMYK colors in Window>Color palette? Color ramp is a bit small but if you just input CMYK values, it´s quite handy...

EDIT: I did a small test with color picker and discovered that if you click your cursor to any CMYK value field, "Add RGB swatch" turns to "Add CMYK swatch"

K

karthik gfxAuthor

Participant

Yeah, i am doing it.

But using the color picker view has become a habit as i used it in all other other adobe softwares.

This is just a doubt. Why in a software which is mostly used for print production rather than web purpose, RGB Color space view is put and not cmyk color space. This question is asked to me by many of my friends & colleagues and i have no answer

rob day

Community Expert

This is just a doubt. Why in a software which is mostly used for print production rather than web purpose, RGB Color space view is put and not cmyk color space. This question is asked to me by many of my friends & colleagues and i have no answer

The Color Picker lets you easily get a color managed conversion of a color from one space to another. So, 0|0|0|50 CMYK might be equal to 148|148|148 RGB, but there are also many possible conversions of 148|148|148 RGB to CMYK depending on the press profile—it could also be something like 44|36|36|2.

The Color and Swatches panels let you make CMYK builds, but the don't let you easily make conversions between spaces.

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