The translation between color spaces can lead to some unexpected results when switching from one application to another. The RGB color space used for monitors and the CMYK color space used for most color printers serves as a good example.
I started with a Macintosh image that, on the monitor, was 50 percent red and 25 percent green. I then used two popular image-manipulating packages, Altsys (formerly Aldus) FreeHand 4.0a and Adobe Photoshop 3.0.
According to FreeHand, to reproduce this image on a CMYK printer requires 50 percent cyan, 75 percent magenta, 100 percent yellow, and 0 percent black. Photoshop, however, calls for 30 percent cyan, 69 percent magenta, 100 percent yellow, and 36 percent black--for the same pr
inter. The figure "
Color Inconsistencies
" shows what the resulting colors look like.
These differences in translation are not isolated. Products from Adobe, Aldus, and Quark will show variations in color space translations for RGB, CMYK, and other common models. Even comprehensive color systems can run into trouble. Of the original 1012 Pantone colors for coated paper, for example, 70 cannot be properly reproduced with CMYK inks, because they fall outside of the CMYK gamut.
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Lost in Color Space
