Color Mode Converter

RGB describes color as light -- how much red, green, and blue a screen emits -- while CMYK describes color as ink, and HSL describes color as hue, intensity, and brightness the way a designer might describe it verbally. This calculator converts one RGB value into all three so you can move a color between a screen mockup, a print job, and a design system's color palette. The CMYK conversion first finds Key/Black (K) as the complement of whichever channel is brightest, then derives Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow from how far the other two channels fall short of that brightest channel -- each ink channel is the mirror of its matching RGB primary: raising Red never increases Cyan, and raising Green never increases Magenta, since more of a primary color means less of its complementary ink is needed -- and once that primary is the brightest channel, the ink drops to zero and stays there.

The HSL conversion instead measures Hue as an angle around a color wheel derived from which RGB channel dominates, Saturation as how far the color sits from a neutral gray, and Lightness as the simple average of the brightest and darkest of the three channels. Because RGB is an additive (light) model and CMYK is subtractive (ink), the two will never match exactly on screen versus in print -- this conversion is a standard approximation useful for planning, not a substitute for checking an actual proof against your printer's color profile.