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sydney080909
Participant
June 5, 2019
Question

RGB CMYK values not showing properly

  • June 5, 2019
  • 5 replies
  • 3295 views

I am working on a photoshop file, I have the values of the color in RGB and CMYK, once I make the color it does not match to the color I’m trying to make. I know I have the right numbers. I saved the file as a jpeg, png, tiff, sent it to another computer and phone thinking it could be a monitor issue, no luck. Also opened on illustrator and tried the values and still no luck. Anyone have this issue before? Please need help thank you.

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    5 replies

    davescm
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    June 5, 2019

    sydney080909  wrote

    ..... I know I have the right numbers.....

    Why do you say that? From where did you get the numbers and were they given to you in the context of specific RGB and CMYK colour spaces? If they were , have you used the numbers in those same colour spaces?

    For example RGB 0,255,0 is green. But what specific colour of green?  It could be anything.
    However 0,255,0 in sRGB colour space is a specific colour. 0,255,0 in Adobe RGB is another specific colour but different to the previous one. 0,255,0 in ProPhoto is yet another specific colour and again different to the other two.

    Once you know which colour you are talking about, by having both the values and the colour space, then you can look at displaying it correctly. To do this Photoshop uses colour management. This uses the pixel values and colour space in your document along with a colour profile of your monitor to display colours correctly. That of course relies on the document having the correct colour space profile and the monitor profile in your operating system accurately describing your monitor. That is why we use hardware devices to calibrate and profile our monitors.
    If you display the document in an application that does not use colour management then it will display incorrectly. How incorrect depends on both the display and the profile used in the document. Phones are the worst case. They are not colour managed yet they use displays which have wide gamuts (i.e can display a wide range of colour). A recipe for incorrect colour.

    Dave

    Legend
    June 5, 2019

    Everybody who expects RGB and CMYK conversions to have matching colours to some list they have found or been given finds this. Colour management doesn’t work that way.

    c.pfaffenbichler
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    June 5, 2019

    Which is owed to the fact that CMYK spaces can have more than one possible combination of process colors that achieve the same appearance.

    Which is kind of the basis for GCR and UCR.

    c.pfaffenbichler
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    June 5, 2019

    And yet another thing:

    When setting a color in an RGB image with CMYK values in the Color Picker the Color will usually not maintain those CMYK values because they get »re-separated« according to the CMYK (Working) Space’s specifics.

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    June 5, 2019

    Numbers are color space specific.

    The same color will have different numbers in sRGB vs Adobe RGB.

    The same numbers will yield different colors in sRGB vs Adobe RGB.

    And so on.

    JJMack
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    June 5, 2019

    Some Image Viewers are color managed and some users calibrate their displays.  Phone app as far as I known are not color manages and I do not believe Phone displays are calibrated. When your display is calibrated and you are using an image viewer that is color managed and are viewing an image file with and embedded color profile  the image on that display colors should be correct.  If this is not the what you are using  the image colors  most likely will not be correct.

    JJMack
    Daniel E Lane
    Inspiring
    June 5, 2019

    What JJMack was saying was correct, but one more thing to add there. You will never see the exact right colors for any CMYK image on a monitor. Your computer monitors and phones and all things like that are all RGB color. CMYK is only for print. The monitors will give you only an approximation of the colors. And depending on what computer you are using and what monitor you have, even if it is color graded and recently calibrated, it may show different colors due to how that particular system interprets CMYK color images.