Why do CMYK and RGB colors sometimes look different?

CMYK is a subtractive model designed for physical ink on paper, while RGB is additive light on a screen — the conversion is an approximation, and printed results can vary by printer and paper.

CMYK to RGB Converter

Convert CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key/black) values, commonly used for print, into RGB values for screen display.

Inputs

Results

Red: 59
Green: 130
Blue: 245

Try an example

Formula

R = 255×(1−C)×(1−K), similarly for G, B

Learn How This Works

Aspect Ratio Scaling and CMYK-to-RGB Conversion Explained

How proportional image resizing works, and how CMYK print colors translate to RGB screen colors.

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