rocknbil - 6:25 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

The limitations of color gamut aren't discussed in this thread, and this is a very important consideration when choosing colors.

Colors available to the RGB gamut are simply not capable of reproducing some colors in Pantone or CMYK gamuts, and vice-versa. Most of the color conversion tables you will see can only get close. For example, try converting an RGB blue to CMYK, the best you will get is a deep "navy" blue, and it is still miles off from a pure RBG blue.

This is because RGB color is additive, using light as it's "pigment," and CMYK/Pantone colors are subtractive, meaning the color you see is reflected from a colored surface. Due to the limitations in the purity of pigments, this is going to vary from batch to batch and depending on the lighting source.

So to answer the question, How to get a Closer Match for the Web, the colors chosen in the intitial design process should be colors that can easily pass across the intended color gamuts without much variation. If you don't allow this technical requirement to override your artistic intentions, you are going to have inconsistencies with your presentation, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

With printing, there is a control set: you know the capabilities and tolerances of your printing equipment. On the Internet, there is no such control.

I spent ten years in the printing industry as a drum scanner operator in the pre-desktop publishing days, and this was indeed one of the most frequent topics of discussion with designers, explaining what happened to their color. :-)