Color Converter

Monitors and screens emit light. They start pitch black when turned off. To create colors, they add light (Red, Green, and Blue). If you add 100% of all three, you get pure White light.

• RGB: Represents the intensity of Red, Green, and Blue from 0 to 255.
• HEX: Simply RGB translated into Base-16 hexadecimal math. #FF0000 means maximum Red (FF = 255), zero Green, zero Blue.
• HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness): Uses the exact same RGB color space, but wraps it around a 360-degree cylinder to make it easier for human brains to pick matching colors and create color palettes.

Printers don't emit light; they deposit ink onto paper that reflects light. To create colors, the ink subtracts light bouncing off the page.

CMYK uses Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black). If you mix 100% of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, you theoretically get Black (though in reality, it's a muddy brown, which is why printers have a dedicated Black ink cartridge, the 'Key').

A common mistake in graphic design is designing a vibrant UI in RGB on a screen, and expecting it to look exactly the same when printed.

Converting RGB to CMYK is complex and lossy because the printable color gamut (the range of possible colors) is physically smaller than what a glowing monitor can display. Extremely bright, neon colors in RGB simply cannot be reproduced using standard CMYK ink.