RGB to CMYK and back algorithm

Question

I am trying to implement a solution for calculating the conversion between RGB and CMYK and vice versa. Here is what I have so far:

  public static int[] rgbToCmyk(int red, int green, int blue)
    {
        int black = Math.min(Math.min(255 - red, 255 - green), 255 - blue);

        if (black!=255) {
            int cyan    = (255-red-black)/(255-black);
            int magenta = (255-green-black)/(255-black);
            int yellow  = (255-blue-black)/(255-black);
            return new int[] {cyan,magenta,yellow,black};
        } else {
            int cyan = 255 - red;
            int magenta = 255 - green;
            int yellow = 255 - blue;
            return new int[] {cyan,magenta,yellow,black};
        }
    }

    public static int[] cmykToRgb(int cyan, int magenta, int yellow, int black)
    {
        if (black!=255) {
            int R = ((255-cyan) * (255-black)) / 255; 
            int G = ((255-magenta) * (255-black)) / 255; 
            int B = ((255-yellow) * (255-black)) / 255;
            return new int[] {R,G,B};
        } else {
            int R = 255 - cyan;
            int G = 255 - magenta;
            int B = 255 - yellow;
            return new int[] {R,G,B};
        }
    }

Answer 1

To accurately convert values from RGB to CMYK and vice versa, the way Photoshop does, you need to use an ICC color profile. All the simple algorithmic solutions you'll find in the interwebs (like the one posted above) are inacurrate and produce colors that are outside the CMYK color gamut (for example they convert CMYK(100, 0, 0, 0) to rgb(0, 255, 255) which is obviously wrong since rgb(0, 255, 255) can't be reproduced with CMYK). Look into the java.awt.color.ICC_ColorSpace and java.awt.color.ICC_Profile classes for converting colors using ICC color profiles. As for the color profile files themselves, Adobe distributes them for free.

Answer 2

As Lea Verou said you should make use of color space information because there isn't an algorithm to map from RGB to CMYK. Adobe has some ICC color profiles available for download1, but I'm not sure how they are licensed.

Once you have the color profiles something like the following would do the job:

import java.awt.color.ColorSpace;
import java.awt.color.ICC_ColorSpace;
import java.awt.color.ICC_Profile;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Arrays;


public class ColorConv {
    final static String pathToCMYKProfile = "C:\\UncoatedFOGRA29.icc";

    public static float[] rgbToCmyk(float... rgb) throws IOException {
        if (rgb.length != 3) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException();
        }
        ColorSpace instance = new ICC_ColorSpace(ICC_Profile.getInstance(pathToCMYKProfile));
        float[] fromRGB = instance.fromRGB(rgb);
        return fromRGB;
    }
    public static float[] cmykToRgb(float... cmyk) throws IOException {
        if (cmyk.length != 4) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException();
        }
        ColorSpace instance = new ICC_ColorSpace(ICC_Profile.getInstance(pathToCMYKProfile));
        float[] fromRGB = instance.toRGB(cmyk);
        return fromRGB;
    }

    public static void main(String... args) {
        try {
            float[] rgbToCmyk = rgbToCmyk(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f);
            System.out.println(Arrays.toString(rgbToCmyk));
            System.out.println(Arrays.toString(cmykToRgb(rgbToCmyk[0], rgbToCmyk[1], rgbToCmyk[2], rgbToCmyk[3])));
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

A better way to do it:

    try {
        // The "from" CMYK colorspace
        ColorSpace cmykColorspace = new ICC_ColorSpace(ICC_Profile.getInstance("icc/CoatedFOGRA27.icc"));
        // The "to" RGB colorspace
        ColorSpace rgbColorspace = new ICC_ColorSpace(ICC_Profile.getInstance("icc/AdobeRGB1998.icc"));

        // Bring in to CIEXYZ colorspace (refer to Java documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/awt/color/ColorSpace.html)
        float[] ciexyz = cmykColorspace.toCIEXYZ(cmyk);
        float[] thisColorspace = rgbColorspace.fromCIEXYZ(ciexyz);
        float[] rgb = thisColorspace;
        Color c = new Color(rgb[0], rgb[1], rgb[2]);

        // Format RGB as Hex and return
        return String.format("#%06x", c.getRGB() & 0xFFFFFF);
    } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); }

Answer 4

In order to be displayed correctly CMYK images should contain color space information as ICC Profile. So the best way is to use that ICC Profile which can be easily extracted with Sanselan:

ICC_Profile iccProfile = Sanselan.getICCProfile(new File("filename.jpg"));
ColorSpace cs = new ICC_ColorSpace(iccProfile);    

In case there is no ICC Profile attached to the image, I would use Adobe profiles as default.

Now the problem is that you cannot just load JPEG file with custom color space using ImageIO as it will fail throwing an exception complaining that it does not support some color space or sthing like that. Hense you will have to work with rasters:

JPEGImageDecoder decoder = JPEGCodec.createJPEGDecoder(new ByteArrayInputStream(data));
Raster srcRaster = decoder.decodeAsRaster();

BufferedImage result = new BufferedImage(srcRaster.getWidth(), srcRaster.getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
WritableRaster resultRaster = result.getRaster();

ColorConvertOp cmykToRgb = new ColorConvertOp(cs, result.getColorModel().getColorSpace(), null);
cmykToRgb.filter(srcRaster, resultRaster);

You can then use result wherever you need and it will have converted colors.

In practice, however I've come across some images (taken with camera and processed with Photoshop) that had somehow inverted color values so the resulting image was always inverted and even after inverting them once again they were too bright. Although I still have no idea how to find out when exactly to use it (when I need to invert pixel values), I have an algorithm that corrects these values and convert color pixel by pixel:

JPEGImageDecoder decoder = JPEGCodec.createJPEGDecoder(new ByteArrayInputStream(data));
Raster srcRaster =  decoder.decodeAsRaster();

BufferedImage ret = new BufferedImage(srcRaster.getWidth(), srcRaster.getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
WritableRaster resultRaster = ret.getRaster();

for (int x = srcRaster.getMinX(); x < srcRaster.getWidth(); ++x)
    for (int y = srcRaster.getMinY(); y < srcRaster.getHeight(); ++y) {

        float[] p = srcRaster.getPixel(x, y, (float[])null);

        for (int i = 0; i < p.length; ++i)
            p[i] = 1 - p[i] / 255f;

        p = cs.toRGB(p);

        for (int i = 0; i < p.length; ++i)
            p[i] = p[i] * 255f;

        resultRaster.setPixel(x, y, p);
    }

I'm pretty sure RasterOp or ColorConvertOp could be used to make conversation more efficient, but this was enough for me.

Seriously, there is no need to use these simplified CMYK to RGB conversion algorithms as you can use ICC Profile that is embedded into image or available for free from Adobe. Resulting image is going to look better if not perfect (with embedded profile).

Answer 5

public static String makeCMYKString(int color) {
    double red = Color.red(color);
    double green = Color.green(color);
    double blue = Color.blue(color);
    double red1 = red / 255;
    double green1 = green / 255;
    double blue1 = blue / 255;
    double max = (Math.max(Math.max(red1, green1), blue1));
    double K = 1 - max;
    double C = (1 - red1 - K) / (1 - K);
    double M = (1 - green1 - K) / (1 - K);
    double Y = (1 - blue1 - K) / (1 - K);
    double CMYK[] = {C, M, Y, K};
    String cmyk = "CMYK = (" + Math.round(C * 100) + " , " + Math.round(M * 100) + " , " + Math.round(Y * 100) + " , " + Math.round(K * 100) + ")";
    return cmyk;
}

Answer 6

Here is an identical question to yours

Here is a copy/pasta of that page :

/** CMYK to RGB conversion */
/* Adobe PhotoShop algorithm */
cyan = Math.min(255, cyan + black); //black is from K
magenta = Math.min(255, magenta + black);
yellow = Math.min(255, yellow + black);
rgb[0] = 255 - cyan;
rgb[1] = 255 - magenta;
rgb[2] = 255 - yellow;


/* GNU Ghostscript algorithm -- this is better*/
int colors = 255 - black;
rgb[0] = colors * (255 - cyan)/255;
rgb[1] = colors * (255 - magenta)/255;
rgb[2] = colors * (255 - yellow)/255;