How break down colors into their component colour?

#1

Hi folks,

I’m Darshan Hiranandani, I’m interested in learning how to break down colors into their component colors. Could anyone share their methods or tools for effectively analyzing and identifying the component colors of a given color?

Regards
Darshan Hiranandani

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#2

Are you asking about the CMYK or RGB components of colors on your computer display? Or are you asking how to match and reproduce colors found in printed materials?

#3

The same CMYK color might have different ratios of the base inks, depending on the printing process (e.g. FOGRA, U.S. Sheetfed, U.S Web) and the stock of paper.

Then there are wider-gamut CMYK printing processes, like CMYKOGV, which use additional base inks (in this case: orange, green and violet) that might also be part of the color.

Pantone colors are mixed using special, non-CMYK base inks. Those inks and their proportions for each individual color are listed in the Pantone Formula Guide. On-screen, Pantones are reproduced using the LAB color space. The LAB values of Pantone Colors are available through the paid version of Pantone Connect.

RGB colors also have different ratios of the base colors depending on the color space (sRGB, Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB).

To break down a CMYK color, you need a color profile that simulates the printing process used to print the color and the stock of paper on which it was printed (some print shops supply such profiles).

A Pantone color can be broken down using a Pantone book and a Pantone Connect subscription.

To break down an RGB color, you have to know which RGB color space it belongs to.

#4

Unless you are breaking down a Pantone color for wide format.
Then you need to know the machine, the media, the inkset…the weather…and have a properly calibrated profile that spews the inks in appropriate component colors based on the algorithm.
A machine with OG and V is rare. Some subset of that usually, plus a pot for varnish and/or white ink. Some machines have Light Cyan, Light Magenta, something called Photo Black, maybe a Photo Gray and there’s even one machine that uses different curing lamp controls to get gloss and matte in the same print (Canon Colorado, check it out!)

So yeah, this is a very wide open question.
Perhaps they only mean the color wheel. Like red+blue=purple
» Color Wheel

#5

I’ll ask a simpler question:

“What is life?”

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#6

I’ve heard it’s 42

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#7

I think you mean how to break down colors to primary colors, like on a color wheel? If I understood you correctly, you would have to learn the basics of Color theory, which is useful for anyone who wants to develop skills in graphic design.

The basics of the basics are that the color wheel is divided into primary colors (red, blue, yellow), secondary colors (green, orange, purple), and tertiary colors, which are combinations of primary and secondary colors. Knowing these relationships can help you understand how colors mix and influence each other. To do it online you can use Adobe Color Wheel to see how colors breakdown into various color schemes.

For digital colors, you can select a color by picker tool in Photoshop or Illustrator see its RGB (Red, Green, Blue) or CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key/Black) values. I hope this helps but I am not so sure :sweat_smile:

#8

Unless the OP comes back with answers, this is all conjecture.

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