Colour Books

[alexinessex]

I have a "Printed" colour book that shows different percentages of every colour on another percentage of colour makes in CMYK

Is there an "online" version of this somewhere please that someone has done in something like illustrator, indesign, photoshop or similar please?

Many thanks in advance

Kind regards

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

There are colour libraries in all applications, not exactly sure what you are after?

 

[michaelejahn]

Online or digital free color pickers

Online or digital free color pickers

I have a "Printed" colour book that shows different percentages of every colour on another percentage of colour makes in CMYK

Is there an "online" version of this somewhere please that someone has done in something like illustrator, indesign, photoshop or similar please?

here is one ;

Color conversion (RGB / CMYK / HSV / YUV / ...) | web.forret.com

now, having shared this, I will say that while this tool will provide you with a method to figure out what a color "might" look like, it is hardly a good predition for how it will display or print !

a slightly better one is Adobe Kuler;

myPANTONE - myPANTONE & myPANTONE palettes

I have a problem with Kuler, in that since it is Flash based and there is no notion of color management for Flash, you can't use the approach used in Adobe applications (a CMM and an ICC Profile) - when you go to the Kuler site, search for 'swop' and you can read my comment on why this really is pretty useless if you are concerned with predicting how a CMYK value might actually "print"

Most of the companies that offer swatch library books make their money do mention what printing condition was used - and since printing conditions are NOT ALL THE SAME - one CMYK tint value will NOT visually match that same CMYK tint value when you change the printing condition.

So, by and large, CMYK tint libraries are only useful when you stick to a very specifc print condition and use a printed tint book that was made using that print condition.

examples are;

Graphics - COLOR BRIDGE coated

TRUMATCH

-- while it would seem to make perfect sense to have some online tool that enables you to visit and come up with a way to determine "what is the CMYK recipie for this RGB color" - well, it is not all that simple.

The first issue is 'how would I make money if I offered that'.

There is a small free application from Pantone that offer the ability to create swatch libraies that can then be saved and shared with other InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator users;

myPANTONE - myPANTONE & myPANTONE palettes

Hope this helps !

 

[gordo]

I have a "Printed" colour book that shows different percentages of every colour on another percentage of colour makes in CMYK Is there an "online" version of this somewhere please that someone has done in something like illustrator, indesign, photoshop or similar please?

You didn't mention the publisher of the book. If you have that info you might try to contact the publisher and/or author to get PDFs of the book pages. Or, you might try to recreate the pages your self.

If I understand your question correctly, the idea is to compare the printed CMYK swatches with how they appear on your screen. It's a very old technique - a colour atlas - that works quite well. But it is limited in that the chances of a printer that you work with actually printing the same way as the printer of the color atlas you have is pretty slim.
As an alternative, might be to recreate the color atlas your self in Illustrator (not a difficult or too time consuming task) in a poster format and have it output as a proof at each of the printshops you currently use. This assumes that your printers can "match" their proofs, of course. They may output the proof for free as a customer service.

best, gordon p

my print blog here: Quality In Print - current topic: GCR reseparation for ink savings

 

[dimitri]

I do not know of a ready made reference chart, but I like ColorPicker -if i get what you mean- from Gretag, now X-rite.
It has the pantone libraries, or the option to input LAB values of a color. Then, you load your ICC profile, whether it is an industry profile or your custom press profile, and it provides you with CMYK, device dependant, values.

I've found that the values it provides are more accurate than what you get from CS applications. You could do the same thing in Photoshop by the way. Load the profile in the color settings, open the color picker, and plug in LAB values or load a color swatch. It then converts it to the CMYK values of the reference profile (but doesn't offer the DE to the digital LAB value as 'ColorPicker' does).