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I'm working in a palette where for each color I have: - hex value - rgb value - cmyk value
I was working with online tools like http://www.color-hex.com/
The thing is, for the same rgb/hex value I get different cmyk values in Adobe Illustrator than on the web... Which one should I use?
e.g. rgb(110, 201, 200) / #6ec9c8 gives me:
cmyk (0.45, 0, 0 21) for color-hex.com
cmyk (57.04, 0, 26.6, 0) for adobe
a couple of screenshots showing that...
I think there is a simmilar question recently. I'm bad at finding this simmilar questions.
The basic idea is that Ilustrator is using (a different) a color profile. I don't think that that website is using one.
There are several variables to change color models. CMYK Profile (and version), RGB color space, color conversion priority, emmbeded color profile.
I would use the one given in Ilustrator with thoose variables well defined.
You see this kind of things in design guides quite often*. It just makes little sense to specify RGB or CMYK values without mentioning what profile one is talking about**.
Now theres little point in doing this selection if you select the color a system tells you. Rather you should manually and visually pick one that looks good and fits your eyes best (On a appropriate medium). Then your documenting a well reasoned alternative that has no gamut clash.
See the spaces can not all produce same color, your design intent may not nesseserily be exact match but best possible vibrancy etc. So if you really provide good service thats what you design, presumably your better than my computer. If not then dont bother I am perfectly capable of converting these values myself. Just please dont mislead those that dont know.
So yes the difference is in different color management settings/converion intent. Document those.
* In personal experience i have extensively used 6 different style guides for different orgs and they all had these.
** But only one had a mention of what profile should be used for cmyk printing. But no mention of the RGB profile. Turs out half of all documents were prepared in adobe RGB and half in sRGB. So much for color consistency.
