Photoshop color picker inaccuracy? don't know how to proceed my client's work

[YiChen C]

Hi, Everyone,  3 questions, if you could answer just 1 or 2, that would be nice...

I'm wondering about color picker accuracy or maybe something I did to cause this... Please see reference photos.

1) I entered a color code #D06247, and when I changed mode to LAB color, I found the #D06247 changes to #ff4853. Though the color seems no change to my eyes, the color point at hue scale is at very different position. 

2) Strangly, I re-entered a few times color #d06247, it sometimes appears different color on screen and I don't know which color is correct?? You see the color below is more orangy and brownish, and this color is what I see when I use some other online color picker. However, at beginning and most of time, the color shows as in 1) attached photos, more red and pink.

However, despite the different color look for #d06247, the value stays the same? @@

3) I am so very confused. This #d06247 is randomly picked on a bottle from an image client asked me to match it to my best). According to her, the color in the image is more pinkish (she said it's a lot pink there?) than my submitted photo that's more orangy look. However, to me I dont quite see pink on this image she gave me. As I randomly picked color on the bottle using online color picker, color mostly like in 2)photo.  But when I picked color using photoshop color picker, it's more like color in 1)photo, but again, this kind of changes from moment to moment. I just tried again and it looks like 2) color.

My eyes are tired? What am I seeing exactly? What did my client see? (don't think she has knowledge of graphic background or something... and I am very new on taking case)

Thank you for any suggestions and solutions,

Yi-Chen

[Test Screen Name]

This is much more complicated than I suspect you imagine, and your client also has unreasonable expectations.

1) Converting to Lab and back again will try to preserve the colour but not the actual numbers. Expect some change if you do this. It shouldn't matter.

2) The colour you see for any hex code isn't fixed at all, no matter how much people want it to be so. It depends on your monitor - but let's assume it is calibrated - and it depends on your current profile. In the screen shot no document is open, so who knows what profile applies...?

3) Are both you and your client using calibrated monitors? If not, the colours may differ wildly, it is expected. All web sites giving suggested appearance for hex colours are pretty much nonsense, though for many people it is about right if working in sRGB. However, these are not colour managed apps.

[YiChen C]

Thanks... Will look into the mentioned. 

[D Fosse]

To put it very simply:

• Hex is just a different notation for RGB numbers, using base 16 instead of base 10. There is no other difference.
• Numbers are relative to the color space. #d06247 in sRGB is not the same color as #d06247 in Adobe RGB. Inversely, the same color will yield different numbers. Just try for yourself. 
• If these numbers are used without color management and icc profiles, they simply refer to your monitor's native color space, which can be anything at all.

Hex is really outdated and in a modern workflow it only causes confusion. People expect these numbers to have some sort of absolute meaning, and they don't. They're just numbers, and they aren't defined without a color space to define them.

[YiChen C]

Thanks, D_Fosse,

I'm unfamiliar with color stuff.... learning here. Thank you for your explanation.