Newbe Dev Stack

Answer : It is rather involved. The short answer is, converting Munsell codes into RGB involves interpolation of empirical data in 3D that is highly non-linear. The only data set that is publicly available was collected in the 1930's. Free or inexpensive programs that I have found on the net have proved to be flawed. I wrote my own. But I am jumping ahead. Let's start with the basics. Munsell codes are different in kind than those other codes, xyY, Lab, and RGB. Munsell notation describes the color of an object - what people experience when they view the object. (Isaac Newton was the first to realize that color is in the eye of the beholder.) Munsell conducted extensive experiments with human subjects and ingenious devices. The other codes, i.e. xyY, L a b*, and RGB, describe light that has bounced off an object and passed through a convolultion with a rather simple mathematical model of a human eye. Some google-terms are "illuminant," "tri-stimulus,...

Answer : You will not get anything on the paper with a basic CMYK inkjet or laser printer. The CMYK color mixing is subtractive , meaning that it requires the base that is being colored to have all colors (i.e., White ) So that it can create color variation through subtraction: White - Cyan - Yellow = Green White - Yellow - Magenta = Red White - Cyan - Magenta = Blue White is represented as 0 cyan, 0 yellow, 0 magenta, and 0 black - effectively, 0 ink for a printer that simply has those four cartridges. This works great when you have white media, as "printing no ink" simply leaves the white exposed, but as you can imagine, this doesn't work for non-white media. If you don't have a base color to subtract from (i.e., Black ), then it doesn't matter what you subtract from it, you still have the color Black. As others are pointing out, there are special printers which can operate in the CMYW color space, or otherwise have a white ink or toner. These can ...