Powerpoint colours do not match up

[Oz Springs]

Is there an easy way of getting CMYK and RGB colours in Powerpoint to look
the same as they do in the ³Colors² window and in Quark or InDesign?

For example CMHK 91,43,0,0 looks a lovely smoky blue in Quark or the
³Colors² window, but transfer the colour to PowerPoint and it looks like a
bright powder blue - like a uniform colour - and does not give the same
effect at all.

Thanks for any help




Oz

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Oz,

Powerpoint works in the RGB system.

I find this page useful....

http://www.reeddesign.co.uk/test/pantone2rgb.html

Cheers
TAJ Simmons
microsoft powerpoint mvp

awesome - powerpoint backgrounds,
free powerpoint templates, tutorials, hints and tips etc
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com

 

[Oz Springs]

Hi TAJ
Thanks for this useful website. OK, the same CMYK colour I mentioned has the
RGB equivalent of 23,145,255. It¹s handy for PowerPoint that RGB has many
more shades than CMYK since CMYK covers printable colours while RGB has a
much wider screen set, including all CMYK colours.

I am using PowerPoint 2004, and if you click on ³More Fill Colors...² in the
³Fill Color² window you get the generic Apple ³Colors² window which has a
choice of several ways of viewing colours, including a series of sliders
from which you can choose Gray Scale slider, RGB Slider, CMYK and HSB
sliders.

If I create a colour in the CMYK slider I can then click on the RGB slider
and get its equivalent. It is still the same shade, but it shows an RGB
number rather than a CMYK number.

This shade looks different in PowerPoint than it does in Quark (which can
use both RGB and CMYK), and prints differently.

Do you know of any way I can easily get the PowerPoint colour to match the
way it looks and prints in Quark?

Many thanks



Oz

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Is there an easy way of getting CMYK and RGB colours in Powerpoint to look
the same as they do in the ³Colors² window and in Quark or InDesign?

There are no CMYK colors in PowerPoint. Anything coming in as CMYK gets
translated to RGB. The translation, as far as I know, is a simple formulaic
one rather than one that makes use of any color management.

You'll probably need to mix the colors in PowerPoint itself. If Quark can
display the color you want on the monitor, then the color can be specified in
RGB. You'll need to work out the correct RGB values.

Or better yet, fire up QXP, display the color you want. Then use Digital Color
Meter from your Applications folder to measure the RGB value QXP's displaying
on screen, dial that into PPT and you should be in business.

For example CMHK 91,43,0,0 looks a lovely smoky blue in Quark or the
³Colors² window, but transfer the colour to PowerPoint and it looks like a
bright powder blue - like a uniform colour - and does not give the same
effect at all.

Thanks for any help

Oz

================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Do you know of any way I can easily get the PowerPoint colour to match the

way it looks and prints in Quark?

Sure. Turn off color management in Quark. ;-)

 

[Oz Springs]

But doesn¹t that mean I get Quark to look like PowerPoint? I want it the
other way around...

:-(

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

But doesn¹t that mean I get Quark to look like PowerPoint? I want it the
other way around...

Not gonna happen. What you're seeing in QXP is:

You supply CMYK value

QXP runs it through color management to produce a managed RGB equivalent of the
CMYK

Note: what you're seeing will either change whenever you change output devices
and is only meaningful for that particular output device. That's the nature of
color management and CMYK.

On the other hand, since QXP's producing an RGB value for screen display, you
should be able to pick it up as I explained in my other post and plug it into
PPT.

:-(

================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Oz Springs]

Thank you very much for your advice. I did use the DigitalColor Meter and
changed three colors and their tints (27 in all) and the PowerPoint slides
on my screen are much closer to the Quark version which is great because the
creatives showed their client the colours in Quark without checking how they
would look in PowerPoint and Word (usually awful).

These slides are going to be used on PCs and I was going to check (tomorrow)
that the colours worked on Windows before I said thank you for your very
helpful advice - but I think they will - at least I hope they will.

Kind regards



Oz

PS I wonder why MS Office uses different numbers in RGB from Quark,
Photoshop, InDesign etc. On the meter I was using 8 bit color numbers, not
the % which was used in earlier versions of PowerPoint.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thank you very much for your advice. I did use the DigitalColor Meter and
changed three colors and their tints (27 in all) and the PowerPoint slides
on my screen are much closer to the Quark version which is great because the
creatives showed their client the colours in Quark without checking how they
would look in PowerPoint and Word (usually awful).

Or at least VERY different from what's expected. ;-)

These slides are going to be used on PCs and I was going to check (tomorrow)
that the colours worked on Windows before I said thank you for your very
helpful advice - but I think they will - at least I hope they will.

There may be some variations (Mac vs PC gamma, different monitor adjustments) but
I'd expect that to be a lot more subtle than the CMYK to RGB variations you've
seen. Best 'o luck!

PS I wonder why MS Office uses different numbers in RGB from Quark,
Photoshop, InDesign etc. On the meter I was using 8 bit color numbers, not
the % which was used in earlier versions of PowerPoint.

Hm. Maybe to make it more consistent with the Windows version? Under the hood,
it uses 24-bit RGB color (three 8-bit bytes) but the interface for picking the
colors is different, I suppose. It's different between 2001 and X as well.



================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================