🚀 go-pugleaf

      You say that the CMYK values won't necessarily change when converting
      to profile.




If it's me you're referring to, read carefully: I didn't write that, and I'm not sure where you're getting it from.

I wrote that "a number of Pantone colors may be well within reproducible range of the press and inks used to print your work", but that's different from what you're mentioning here.

      I just filled an RGB file with the equivalent CMYK values that matched
      a pantone colour, ie. 0 100 56 19 I then converted to profile (US Web
      Coated (SWOP) v2) and the colour values changed to: 11 100 57 2




Converting from one space to another *always* changes the color numbers in the file. Even when you convert from one CMYK space to another, or from one RGB space to a different RGB space.

What will *not* change is the *appearance* of that color. That's because any set of CMYK or RGB numbers produces a different-looking color when associated with different profiles.

By themselves, without a profile to assign to them a definite color appearance, the file's CMYK or RGB numbers have no objective color meaning.

In short, expect the color *numbers* to change, but expect the color *appearance* to remain constant -- except when the destination space is unable to reproduce the saturated appearance of the source color (gamut mismatch). In that case, the color will be mapped to the closest similar color in the destination, according to the selected rendering intent.