I need help!!!!!!!!! Custom colors in photoshop....

[raymondlewisjon]

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask my question.

My department is constantly working with multichannel documents. I find myself now needing to be abe to create my own custom ".acb" files containing color values that I have corrected for our own purposes.

However, there is almost no documentation about this. I have written a MAC OSX native application for developing ".acf" color libraries for use in other applications. It let's you assign RGB and CMYK values to a specific spot color. In essence, it let's you display PANTONE colors on screen with the proper RGB values, but converts them to the closest CMYK match when printing.

The only reason I am telling you this, is because I am willing to trade my application (and all source code) for any useful information regarding how to create a custom ".acb" color book for Photoshop on a MAC.

 

[emw]

Look here:

http://www.magnetiq.com/docs/PhotoshopColorBook.txt

Don't know if that will help you or not, but it appears to provide some fairly detailed documentation on the .acb file format. If you're a programmer, you'll probably be able to decipher it.

 

[raymondlewisjon]

Thanks

Thank you.

I was already aware of that page. It kind of helps me to understand the file structure, but there is some type of compression or something used in the file that I do not understand.

When I open a ".acb" file there seems to be alot of information missing or converted to crazy characters (example:ƒˆ†¨¥¨§¢£). The color values,the version number, etc are listed in this crazy code. I guess what I really need is the key to decoding and encoding the code that it uses.

However, you responded very quickly.

If you are using OSX, I can upload the ".sit" file that contains my application for ".acf" files to my website where you can download it.

It would be a Project Builder project.

Reply back and let me know if you are interested.

 

[emw]

No sweat...

When I open a ".acb" file there seems to be alot of information missing or converted to crazy characters (example:ƒˆ†¨¥¨§¢£). The color values,the version number, etc are listed in this crazy code. I guess what I really need is the key to decoding and encoding the code that it uses.

You need to open the file in a hex editor like PeekIt, which will allow you to see the hex equivalent of the characters you are seeing. The link above gives a pretty detailed description of how to interpret the file. It will likely take some time, but I'm sure you can duplicate the structure.

Thanks for the offer for your app, but I don't really need it... we've got something like that already (but yours sounds pretty cool).