The trouble with downloading this chart from the web is that the document has no color profile. This makes the swatches totally erratic, and therefore useless. If you assign Adobe RGB the file will become saturated and contrasty. If you assign ColorMatch it becomes less so. Try sRGB and it'll be less saturated and quite contrasty. This is a typical broken link in the chain of color management. The 'flavour' of RGB is what gives meaning to those numbers. A formula for color in one flavour of RGB will often appear different in another, and when we work with skin tones this has an enormous impact, because we're dealing with memory colors – colors that our eyes are amazingly good at perceiving. These days we always work with ICC profiles – whether we're aware of it or not. You may or may not get the warning dialogs, because many
PS users may be working on the Color Settings defaults, and they don't inform you of such inconsistencies. If using these charts, I would make the colors from the RGB numbers below the swatches. I tried. Doing so immediately threw up another issue for me. On the top left swatch I balked a little when I saw the number 255 220 177, because 255 is never a good sign. To me it says that the red is maxed out i.e. it's clipping. Indeed, re-making the color by this formula in ARGB and then soft-proofing it against my working CMYK (Coated Fogra 27) gives an immediate color change on screen. In other words, this color will not translate faithfully to CMYK. It got darker and slightly more Mag when pressing Cmd+Y. On further testing it'll also print darker and redder on SWOP. I'm sure most of the other colors are fine, but I'd be a bit skeptical to using any chart that doesn't conform to color management. --- Gry Garness
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop
Author of:
Essential Color Optimization in Photoshop CS3
Essential Color Management
Digital Retouching for Fashion, Beauty and Portrait Photography
www.grygarness.com