CMYK Eyedropper

It would help me alot trying to get white balance, HSL and Calibration tabs fine tuned for skin tones.
I realize LR works in ProPhoto workspace, but still, Photoshop has a readout for CMYK percentages while working in ProPhoto so it's possible.
Wayne

What do you mean I don't use this approach in Photoshop? As far as I know, I do.
What makes you say my workflow isn't color managed? My monitor is profiled, my printer is profiled, I preserve color spaces. If that's not color management, then what am I missing?
My eyes are not reliable. From what I thought I knew, eyes can be tricked fairly easily which is why we use spectrophotometers to read color rather than our eyes. (Or is this just a conspiracy by X-Rite?)
And I can't hard proof 500 images when I'm doing school and sports photography.
And I use the cmyk numbers, not necessarily the entire method. I can "mask" the skin tones in the HSL command by selecting the red channel, then using the eyedropper to sample the fleshtone (I'm already 98% of the way there from LR) and then kick up the hue 1 to 3 points until yellow is = to magenta. It looks a whole lot better and for some reason I can't get this level of control in LR with the tint slider. Green/Magenta gives me fits and if I could just sample the flesh tone and get something other than rgb in percantages it would help tremendously.
What can I say, it would. I WISH it wasn't so. I don't have the sight equivalent of "perfect pitch".

Similar Messages

Eyedropper tool RGB and CMYK help!

When I try and sample a color from a graphic imported with the eyedropper tool, it automatically creates the swatch as RGB. The imported graphic is CMYK and the document color mode is CMYK. The InDesign file is set for Print.
Please help. I hate having to select a swatch and then have to change it to CMYK every time!

For placed ai and pdf files the preview proxy is always RGB so the eyedropper gets RGB values. With image files the eyedropper will return the actual pixel color. If you are trying to get an exact match to the placed vector file's CMYK values, converting the proxy RGB values to CMYK won't work because the color will be a color managed conversion from RGB to CMYK.

Eyedropper tool - Makes color RGB from CMYK image.

I made an image CMYK in photostop, and then placed it in an indesign file. When I used the eyedropper tool to grab a color from that graphic, the eyedropper tool made that color RGB. Our printer only accepts CMYK. So, I am a bit confused. How can I fix this? Or will this be a non-issue?
Thanks

I can think of three possibilities for what happened.
If the image is missing (check the links panel) the eydropper is sampling the RGB screen preview.
If you pasted the image from Photoshop instead of Placing it, you only pasted the low resolution RGB screen preview, and you have more problems than the eyedropper color.
If you opened the color picker by double-clicking on the color box, then said OK while the cursor was in one of the RGB fields (the default state), the color was converted from CMYK to RGB.
The only time RGB is a non-issue is when you are outputting on a RGB device (screen or desktop printer). If the printer said he wants CMYK you need to give him CMYK, or pay him to fix it.
Peter

Eyedropper Bug? (Objects in Clipping Masks Report Different CMYK values0

1. Draw a box and fill it with c20 m40 y60.
2. Measure with the eyedropper. Result: c20 m40 y60
3. Draw another box and clip the first into it.
4. Measure with the eyedropper. Result: c16.47 m38.1 y58.41 k4.22
5. Release clipping mask.
5. Measure with the eyedropper. Result: c20 m40 y60
Additionally, if you output the file to PDF or through the RIP the results are c20 m40 y60, which indicates this is an eyedropper bug.
Is there any legit reason why this might happen (I can't think of any) before I submit a bug report?

>Perhaps it happens because the document color space is RGB.
Exactly right, Gernot.
I was able to replicate the 'problem' by using RGB mode. Eyedropper readings within the masked object are 19.61 / 39.61 / 59.61 / 0.39.
Differences between my readings and the OP's might be caused by different color space settings.
Or, it might be a version-dependent thing.

Eyedropper in PS CS6 picking wrong color

My eyedropper started picking the wrong color! I ahve reset and reinstalled PS - and still have this problem. No matter what color I click the eyedropper on, it picks a shade darker than what I want. Anyone have any ideas? Like I said, I am running PS CS6 on OS Mountain Lion.

hanci wrote:
I also have problems with the eyedropper in RGB mode. I have a blue background color and when selecting it with the eyedropper I get #244f69 when I'm in RGB mode. And if I use that color in CSS on a website, the color gets darger than the original color in Photoshop. But if I change to CMYK mode and use the eyedropper again, then i get this code on the same background #00516a. And with that code I get the color I want on the website.
Adobe Photoshop Version: 13.0 (13.0 20120315.r.428 2012/03/15:21:00:00) x64
Am I doing something wrong?
Apart from your Photoshop needing updated to at least 13.0.1, the problem may be that your RGB document, which you're sampling in Photoshop, does not have sRGB profile and/or your Web browser is not colour managed and/or your computer is not using a correctly calibrated monitor profile and/or something else.

Eyedropper tool wrong rgb color

I've placed an rgb image and on top of that a vector square which I wanna give the same color as the bright green one in the rgb image. So I used the eyedropper tool on that bright green color. But as you can see it give a more dull greenish color. The document is in rgb mode. I would expect this more when I was working in cmyk but I ain't. Why isn't the eyedropper tool picking the bright green color? The image is in rgb, illustrator is in rgb, in photoshop I can see the bright green color in the rgb image. So why isn't illustrator using this bright green color with it's eyedropper tool?
Edit: Turns out the eyedropper tool only works correctly (while illustrator is in rgb color mode and the image placed is also in rgb), when the image placed is embedded and not just linked. After I dragged the image on the page and go to Links to have the image embedded and then use the eyedropper tool, I get the exact same color. Seems a bit odd that it won't work the same way when the image is linked?

The eyedropper only works accuratelyon vector objects. Shift eyedropper is misleading as the color chanegs but never has been accurate on bitmaps in Illustrator. Shift eyedropper does not pick up the pixel value, but what is being sent to the monitor going through conversions for color mgmt, color modes, etc. Open the image in photoshop and use the eyedropper set to 1 pixel.

Eyedropper bug

hi everyone,
it seems Photoshop's eyedropper or CMS has a problem. I have attached a sample .psd file so that everyone can reproduce the error.
Just open it and switch Layer1's blending mode from Screen to Linear Dodge. You will notice that as a result the gray pixels will visually get slightly brighter, but the eyedropper will show RGB=(38,38,38) in both cases! (you can measure anywhere in the image's center, for example the pixel (X=51,Y=35), that's the point where I measured for the screenshots below).
The point is: any pixel identified by Photoshop as RGB=(38,38,38) should ALWAYS look the same, not sometimes brighter and sometimes darker.
If you don't trust your eyes (which can fall pray to an optical illusion), just open my screenshots in any application with an eyedropper (even Windows Paint will do I guess) and compare the values for the gray area (just make sure the eyedropper's sample size is 1x1 (point sample)). The values will differ.
Or if you don't want to rely on my screenshots, just make your own.
To provide for additional measurement, I also used an on-screen color-picker utility named "ColorCop" which displays the screen pixel's actual RGB values at the current cursor position in real time. The recorded values are obviously the same as can be retrieved from the screenshots shown below, i.e. RGB=(42,42,42) for screenshot 1 and RGB=(43,43,43) for screenshot 2.
NOTE 1: The issue is unrelated to any eventual rounding errors resulting from the blending modes and multiple layers. To prove this, you can flatten the image (menu: layer >> flatten image). Still the same problem.
NOTE 2: For those of you familiar with colour management, the actual values retrieved from your screenshots depend on the color profile currently associated with your monitor. This accounts for the differences between RGB=(38,38,38) and the values in the screenshots (in my case 42,42,42 and 43,43,43). Your values will obviously differ. I also noted that if you choose sRGB as your monitor profile, the error cannot be reproduced.
settings:
colour picker sample size: 1x1
measured document pixel: X=51, Y=35
measured screen pixel: X=602, Y=510
Adobe Photoshop: CS3
document colour space: (irrelevant, sRGB)
.psd document in question: attached
screenshot 1 (RGB=38,38,38 shown as darker gray):
(click to enlarge!) :
screenshot 2 (RGB=38,38,38 shown as lighter gray):

still looks like a simple rounding error to me, when looking in CMYK you get 71/65/64/70 for screen and 71/65/64/69 for Linear Dodge

Why does Illustrator change CMYK color numbers when set to preserve them?

I'm using CS2 on Mac OSX 10.4. Recently I tried importing a Photoshop image into Illustrator and then matching a color in Illustrator to a color in the Photoshop document. But Illustrator changed the CMYK values of the color in the Photoshop document even though I have "Preserve CMYK colors" checked in the color setup window. Both applications and files are set to SWOP v2.
I don't have the same problem when placing either Photoshop or Illustrator files into InDesign.
I ended up recreating the project in InDesign to get consistent color, but I need to know how to make Illustrator preserve color numbers for the project that will come up for which I need Illustrator features.
Thanks.

So here we are at Illustrator CC and this very simple integration has not been fixed... because as far as I'm concerned... it is a BUG!
Seriously, no offense to @Steve Fairburn... but that is just so archaic for a "suite" of programs that should work well together.
There is absolutely NO need for CMYK colors to be valued beyond solid percentages in 1% increments in either Illustrator or InDesign!
Here's a stupid workaround if you need to link images, and pull colors:
Load the image as "linked" -> duplicate it and choose "embed" -> pull the colors and make swatches with the eyedropper tool... then throw it away. You could also just relink the file after an embed, making sure to check the Adanced Options checkbox.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
1) why does InDesign give you the ability to "Reveal the Linked Image on the Desktop", whereas in Illy you can only reveal in Bridge?
2) "placing" the same PSD/PDF image in InDesign and Illustrator: ID allows for correct eydropper color pulling, while IL does not until you embed it.

RGB swatches in CMYK document

hi all
here's a conondrum:
I am working on a document that I have set up in CMYK but, after placing an image from the web which must have been an RGB and using eyedropper to copy a colour from it, all the swatches and colours turned to RGB. Even the bits I created before placing the image and using eyedropper... and the colour scheme of the entire doc still is CMYK.
The document is intended for print, I therefore need to change it back somehow. How do I do that please?

Keep the document in color mode CMYK.
Open the RGB image in photoshop, and convert to CMYK.
Sample in Photoshop the color you need and write that down.
Go to Illustrator and create a swatch with the color you wrote down.
You cannot accurately sample colors from placed photos in Illustrator . Illustrator takes what is sent to the screen in RGB, and then converts that to your color mode. Do NOT use SHIFT eyedropper, though the color looks good your color will not match the CMYK values in your photo.
Illustrator will not change your cmyk document color mode colors to RGB because you sampled with eyedropper. You most likely changed the mode of the color panel to RGB. The color panel should always match the color mode of your document, the panel is misleading otherwise.

Eyedropper not accurate when reading symbols

I have just come across what appears to be a worrying issue within Illustrator CS5, and would like some clarification as to whether other people can replicate it.
If a piece of CMYK artwork is turned into a symbol then placed back on the artboard, the eyedropper no longer accurately reflects the colour of this artwork.
To test, simply make several coloured boxes (I used some of the standard CMYK colours in the Illustrator default swatch board), turn these boxes into a symbol (graphic or movie does not seem to matter, I tend toward movie simply because it is the default and saves mousework...). When editing the symbol directly, the eyedropper will read the correct colour split, but when outside the symbol, editing the main artwork, the eyedropper shows different colour breakdowns.
As an example: a colour which is set to 100M, 100Y inside the symbol reads as 98.57M, 97.38Y when placed on the artboard; 5C, 90Y reads as 3.2C, 92.7Y; 75C, 100Y as 81.73C, 99.38Y; and, the worst one from a reprographic perspective, 85C, 50M shows as 91.12C, 39.28M, 0.65Y and 0.16K.
It is almost as though the colours are being converted between profiles. Obviously, if we were to use these readings to colour up other parts of the artwork, serious colour discrepancies could arise.
This is a simple problem to test, and I would appreciate any feedback to see if this is a widespread issue. I would also be happy to hear of any resolutions or explanations for this behaviour.
Nick

Hi, Mike.
Thanks for the response.
Just to confirm, I am not using shift when using the eyedropper tool, and whilst I appreciate your attempt to offer a possible workaround, I would still like to be able to rely on the eyedropper tool to give an accurate reading on colours inside a symbol. More importantly, I would also like to confirm that colours are not actually changed when used inside a symbol, and that files we export for our customers/printers can be trusted to be colour accurate.
Early, and limited, testing on my part has not revealed any such issue, but the behaviour of the tool makes me a little twitchy. Especially when we are doing work for digital presses that charge per colour hit and there is a possibility that Illustrator may change a two colour blue into a four colour split.
I also hope that you can see that your five point solution (double-click, copy, exit, paste, sample) is not an ideal method in a fast moving artwork environment. Maybe I've been spoilt working with Esko PackEdge, but I do think that we should be able to click on a coloured object with the eyedropper tool, whether it is in a symbol or not, and get an accurate reading of the ink that is being laid down at that point. Or am I misunderstanding the purpose of this tool?
Nick

Why do colors with identical cmyk numbers look very different?

i thought i had this problem solved, but here it is again with a new wrinkle. i have this gorgeous orchid bg box, cmyk 9-10-0-0 in a file with cmyk transparency blend space. same set up in file 2. i create a new bg box with the same numbers and it's a whole different color. there must be some parameters mismatched. what else should i be looking for to make sure the file setups are identical?

Attached is an image of what the color picker looks like after I have used the eyedropper to sample what I believed to be a swath of CMYK color.
It looks to me like the image you are sampling from is an RGB image. You can check that by opening the Links panel and clicking on the link, which will display the image's color space and profile.
actually, what i'm sampling--the lavendar bg on left --is color i created in ID; it's not a link. i thought i created it in cmyk; how can you tell it's rgb?
If you are picking up an out-of-gamut color from an RGB image, you can't match that color with a CMYK fill. You could make the background fill an RGB color and get a match. In that case both the fill and the image would get separated to the same CMYK mix on output to a CMYK device.
which does have a CMYK transparency blend space and separations preview in output.
You are confusing the Transparency blend space with a document color space. The Transparency Blend Space only comes into play if you have transparent objects that need to flattened. It has no effect on non-transparent objects.
hmmm, that's not my experience. so far as i can determine, i have no transparent objects, and yet the color on screen changes dramatically when i switch transparency blend space from rgb to cmyk.
why does changing from View to Separations within Separations Preview change the color of my CMYK background so dramatically?
Your background isn't CMYK it's RGB. When you turn on Overprint or Separation Preview, you get a preview of how your out-of-gamut RGB violet color will convert to CMYK.

Converting from RBG to CMYK - urgent!

This is urgent, since the documents are at the printer.
I converted all the colors in the color list to CMYK before I sent the files, but I didn't realized that all the colors I'd picked with the eyedropper were still RGB. I need a way to globally convert all the colors in the documents to CMYK - even the colors that are not in the list. I've searched the documentation and the forums and can't see how to do this except one by one and that's crazy - there are dozens of colors and four documents.
Please help!

Hi, I hope this could help you
1- Let's first get all the colors in the document listed in the swatches pallette. Go to "Xtras" menu, click in "colors", this will display the submenu of options, choose "Name all colors". The non listed colors from imported objects or created within Freehand but not named will appear now in the pallette.
2- Now with all colors listed... to convert all to cmyk process select the first color name from the swatches list and pressing shift select the last one in the list. (if you need to select non consecutive colors press control (PC) or command (Mac)
3- having the colors selected, click in the assets option icon (small triangle), this will display the options available for those colors, in this case you will select "Make CMYK", you will notice the colors name are now in italics, that means the swatch is in cmyk.
I have a 20 years of Prepress experience and this is a common mistake from designers, lucky you this is easy to fix in freehand, I can't say the same from other graphic programs.
Good luck

Eyedropper picked up RGB. How to flag this?

I'm running ID CS4 and working on a print design.
I was recently using a consistent grey color on a design (C-0 M-0 Y-0 K-79).
At some point I inadvertantly placed a PSD in to the design that used an RGB colorspace, in Photoshop I had colored the background of this image with the same grey value, but forgotten to convert to CMYK, which led to my problem.
When I packaged the design the Summary panel gave me the relevant RGB image warning so I converted my PSD to CMYK in Photoshop and then packaged.
But then my printer informed me one of the grey shapes in my design was in the RGB colorspace with CMYK values of (C-65 M-56 Y-50 K-26)
I must have eyedropped the grey from my PSD while it was still in RGB mode.
My problem is that this new color didn't show up in my swatches, or bring up a warning when I packaged the design.
I know my mistake is using the eyedropper like I did, and I must have mistakenly eyedropped the image thinking it was another ID shape with the correct fill color.
Is there any way I can guarantee this won't happen again (other than stop using eyedropper)? Like change a setting so the preflight panel would flag it?
Thanks in advance,
Ben

The simplest solution would be to create a swatch for this colour of 79K
You can use the separations panel in both InDesign and Acrobat to check if colours are right etc. Turning off the black plate and scanning the pages you would have caught this.
This will be a lesson in checking your own work before sending it on. If it's meant to be a particular shade then check it thoroughly before sending it on.
Luckily the printers caught this - so you can make the change and push on.
There isn't a job that doesn't leave my desk without checking the separations panel in both inDesign and Acrobat - especially where consistent shades of colours are so important to the printing.

Eyedropper tool fails to pick correct colors.

Hello, I'm facing a strange problem with eyedropper tool.
The background is a gradient mesh(ignore the crosses). I used eyedropper tool(shift-click/normal-click both gave the same result) on the background and it gave me a strange result. As you see the back ground is blue-to-black gradation but the color picked is green-ish from nowhere.
How can I solve this?

This is a problem only with gradients because a gradient is an algorithm (formula) where all colors are only those defined with the color stops on the gradient tool (panel). The colors in between are generated on the fly in the color space of the final output which in this case is the RGB color space (profile) of your monitor. As a workaround for this you can expand the gradient to steps or even rasterize it which will happen in the color space of the document and this will make all color values actually described one by one in the illustrator file either as vector object or in a raster image and then the eyedropper will be able to pick them as expected.
A simple example that demonstrate this: in a CMYK document create a gradient with two grayscale stops of 100% and 99%. then Shift clicking on this gradient will not pick an expected color but if you expend the gradient to two steps you will get two objects at 99% and 100%.

Eyedropper tool problem

Hi,
I've got a problem with Illustrator's Eyedropper Tool that neither my teacher nor Google was able to solve. When I use it to copy a color over to a different part of the image, the copied color is slightly off (I verified this using the color sampler in photoshop). I already made sure that the raster sample size is set to "point sample" so I know it's not because it's sampling from too wide of an area. This only happens on my school's Mac, it works fine on my own Mac. However, when I start a document at school and open it on my own Mac, it has the same problem. When I open a new document on my own Mac there is no problem. Is it something with the 'proof setup'? I need it to make an illustration of a picture using mesh tool. This problem has me stumped - any ideas, please?
I included an example. I used the point sample where my mouse pointer is to fill the circle.

thanks for the response
at school the color settings are Prepress 2
my settings are: North American General Purpose 2
I already tried changing that but still can't get the colors right.
I had the same problem with an illustration of a bell pepper we had to make using the mesh tool
I couldn't get the right shade of orange from the original bell pepper image when I tried to reproduce it with the mesh tool
The resulting shade of orange I get from using the eyedropper tool varies depending on which part of the bell pepper I use as its source, although it's the same shade of orange everywhere
Also, it's always darker than it should be, never lighter
here the image is in cmyk and the illustrator file is too, so I don't think that is the problem

CMYK Eyedropper

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