Publisher Colour Chooser gives two different CMYK value sets.

[SamSteele]

Win 7 Publisher V. 1.10.0.1127

Why does the colour chooser give me TWO sets of values for one CMYK colour? (BTW, colour is spelled with a "u" in my version of the program). And, there is no "Help" entry no matter which way I spell colour. The red circled values are the ones recorded with the swatch panel.

[iconoclast]

Hi SamSteele!

The sliders on top have 256 possible values per channel (0-255 - like in RGB), the other ones on the right use percentage terms (0-100%).

[R C-R]

41 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

The sliders on top have 256 possible values per channel (0-255 - like in RGB), the other ones on the right use percentage terms (0-100%).

FWIW, on my Mac the sliders go from 0 to 100, same as the CMYK fields. Maybe a difference in the Mac vs. Windows versions?

EDIT: I first tested this in APub, since that was the app indicated in the topic title. I have now tested it in AP (same as APub) & in AD, where the top sliders go from 0-255 & the CMYK fields go from 0 to 100.

[SamSteele]

2 hours ago, iconoclast said:

Hi SamSteele!

The sliders on top have 256 possible values per channel (0-255 - like in RGB), the other ones on the right use percentage terms (0-100%).

I have never seen CMYK sec'd as other than 0—100%. The 0—255 sliders are fake—and distracting—as far as I'm concerned. Some computer nerd fooling around??

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[iconoclast]

5 hours ago, SamSteele said:

I have never seen CMYK sec'd as other than 0—100%. The 0—255 sliders are fake—and distracting—as far as I'm concerned. Some computer nerd fooling around??

Yes, it's verry unusual. Don't know if it makes any sense. I saw something somehow similar before with the Alpha channel (RGBA). As far as I remember, it was in GIMP. Normally the Alpha channel also is defined in percentage from 0 to 100. But there it was in values from 0 to 255.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Old Bruce]

I only see 0 to 100 for the CMYK values in all three applications.

However I see something weird with the CMYK sliders jumping around... Doesn't matter if the document is CMYK or RGB.

[Hangman]

@Old Bruce I spotted that as well and posted about it here, though this is only happening with CMYK values for me, RGB values are are working as expected (i.e., without the jumpy behaviour)...

 

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Hangman]

Seems a little 'odd' that Serif would have different behaviours between Windows and Mac apps so would certainly be interesting to hear from someone there to clarify whether this is by design (on Windows) or actually a bug since the behaviour appears to be Windows specific?

[Old Bruce]

I would say the bug is in the CMYK values being more than 100. The CMYK are inks for use in presses, with the zero to 100 being the amount of coverage expressed as a percentage.

[iconoclast]

Just now, Hangman said:

Seems a little 'odd' that Serif would have different behaviours between Windows and Mac apps so would certainly be interesting to hear from someone there to clarify whether this is by design (on Windows) or actually a bug since the behaviour appears to be Windows specific?

I think it's a bug.

If you drag the point in the colourfield of Publisher's colourchooser to the top - so absolute white - all values of all CMYK-sliders turn to "0", except the Magenta-slider of the sliders on top: it has a value of "1". But this only seems to happen with the FOGRA 27 colour profile. Verry confusing!

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Hangman]

On 10/25/2021 at 11:11 PM, SamSteele said:

Win 7 Publisher V. 1.10.0.1127

Why does the colour chooser give me TWO sets of values for one CMYK colour? (BTW, colour is spelled with a "u" in my version of the program). And, there is no "Help" entry no matter which way I spell colour. The red circled values are the ones recorded with the swatch panel.

That's because Serif is a UK company so they've spelt colour the correct way... 😂

So, the problem/issue turns out to be very simple... basically changing colour values between 8 bit and Percentage using the hamburger menu in the colour palette updates the sliders in the Colour Palette correctly but this doesn't pass through to the Colour Chooser until the respective app is closed and re-opened.

1. If you open a new or existing document and the Colour Palette is set to CMYK 8 bit, double clicking the fill colour to open the Colour Chooser will also display CMYK 8 bit sliders.
2. Close the Colour Chooser.
3. Change the Colour Palette to Percentage from the hamburger menu and the Colour Palette sliders update correctly to reflect the change however,  open the Colour Chooser again and it still shows CMYK 8 bit sliders.
4. Close the Colour Chooser and then Quit Publisher (or any of the apps, it affects all of them) and re-open the document, when the Colour Chooser is opened again it will now correctly display CMYK Percentage sliders.

NB: The app has to be closed, not just the document and the same issue exists with RGB colour as well.

This explains why it is possible to see a mix of CMYK 8 bit and Percentage values in the colour Chooser at the same time.

Having said that the CMYK values displayed in the Colour Chooser on the right hand side only ever display as percentage values which means when using 8 bit there will always be a mix of both 8 bit and Percentage values shown in the Colour Chooser, so my question would be, should both the RGB and CMYK values on the right of the Colour Chooser update to reflect the respective slider values, i.e. 8 bit or Percentage values?

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

So, the problem/issue turns out to be very simple... basically changing colour values between 8 bit and Percentage using the hamburger menu in the colour palette updates the sliders in the Colour Palette correctly but this doesn't pass through to the Colour Chooser until the respective app is closed and re-opened.

Thanks! That explains why I was getting different results on my Mac with the different apps -- I never really paid any attention to the CMYK hamburger 8 bit/percent options until you mentioned this.

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

so my question would be, should both the RGB and CMYK values on the right of the Colour Chooser update to reflect the respective slider values, i.e. 8 bit or Percentage values?

For CMYK, I would not mind if they always show percentage values & the top sliders always show 8 bit values. For RGB, I would like to see the top sliders show 8, 16 (or 32?) bit values depending on the document's color format. I would also like to see the percentage fields accept & display fractional values at whatever decimal precision the bit depth of the format permits.

[SamSteele]

34 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Thanks! That explains why I was getting different results on my Mac with the different apps -- I never really paid any attention to the CMYK hamburger 8 bit/percent options until you mentioned this.

For CMYK, I would not mind if they always show percentage values & the top sliders always show 8 bit values. For RGB, I would like to see the top sliders show 8, 16 (or 32?) bit values depending on the document's color format. I would also like to see the percentage fields accept & display fractional values at whatever decimal precision the bit depth of the format permits.

To be honest, I went back to my document where this occurred and I don't know how I got there. However, I'm glad to see the phenomenon has been given a good airing. I'm not sure if 4C print shops (or digital printers) can reproduce individual inks to 1 or more decimal places (i.e 34% magenta ink, yes, but not 34.2% or 34.25% magenta ink). Some printer will tell us, I'm sure. Always listen to your printer!

Cheers.