Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Relative and Absolute Colorimetric

Both Relative and Absolute Colorimetric shift only those colors that are not reproducible in CMYK, leaving the rest of the colors largely unchanged. The main difference between the two is that Relative Colorimetric makes sure that white in the original image will end up as white in CMYK mode. That's not overly important unless you're using an RGB working space that creates a white that is darker than what you can create in CMYK mode. This feature is mainly used in the Print dialog box when printing an image to a desktop color printer that can reproduce a brighter white than a printing press. In that situation the difference between relative and absolute is the difference between simulating the “whiteness” of ...