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Setting Accurate RGB Colours in Powerpoint 16.39 Office 365 and OS Catalina

Anonymous
2020-07-17T16:08:19+00:00

Hi,

I am having major issues setting and keeping my RGB colour values in Powerpoint 16.39 Office 365 and OS Catalina. This is what's occurring:

  1. Go to design tab, colours - change all of my RGB colour values to replicate my clients brand guideline values
  2. Apply the scheme
  3. When I check the RGB values, out of 5 colours, 3 of them are wrong and the RGB values change

I've read a lot of blogs and the most relevant one I have found is here. It states to download a third party 'color picker' tool and install, so that when I go to manually change the RGB values in PPT, I will get a new tab to set colours. So I've tried:

  1. developer colour picker I download, save into 'library/color picker folder/' but when I open the colour area in PPT I get a message saying '“DeveloperColorPicker.colorPicker” cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified.' and I can't proceed unless I delete the software
  2. Skala color installer. I have managed to install this, so now there is a new 'tab' in the colour area on PPT but the same thing happens. I had in all my RGB colours, then I save and when I check them they are all inconsistent.

I've also read suggestions that if I change my colours manually in the masters then that is a work around. Yes, it's a temporary fix but it's not great as I build templates for companies and I need the correct colours to be listed in the colour panels drop down menus others brand identities will be diluted with a wash of random colours.

My questions are:

  1. Is there a way to make this work within PPT
  2. Are there any third party colour pickers that work
  3. Is there a way to make the 'developer colour picker software' work

Thanks, any help you've got would be greatly appreciated!

Microsoft 365 and Office | PowerPoint | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-08-28T05:49:51+00:00

    I think I worked this out - please test on your own systems

    Firstly when you set up the colour theme edit the .xml in TextEdit - by entering the Hex values after each accent value, you can do this with ppt closed so is device/app independent.

    Then any Illustrator file that need to be exported to an .svg - turn off colour management

    Edit>Assign profile

    This should bypass the Mac OS profile and keep colours true.

    The inbuilt colour picker in PPT still picks up the wrong colour but after installing a 3rd party picker, I used Skala Colour - the colours are correct.

    Hope this works for you guys.

    King regards

    Mark Read

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  2. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 435.6K Reputation points
    2020-07-21T15:49:42+00:00

    PMFJI: John is a recognized authority on this type of topic but I just wanted to provide a little background information as to why the values change if you aren't already aware of it.

    The RGB color model [in theory, at least] provides for 16,777,216 possible colors [256^3], so not every one of them is available in each Color Profile... The Color Profile determines which specific values are available when using that profile.

    Long story short: If you enter a combination of values which isn't supported by the specified Color Profile the values are altered to the "nearest neighbor" the profile does provide. In some cases that is virtually undetectable; In others it can be rather blatant. If you want to see this in action you can repeat this experiment:

    • Open the Apple Color Picker in any program
    • Select RGB Sliders
    • Enter R-13,G-8, B-74 [actually almost any 3 RGB values will do]
      • Note that the color is shown as almost black
    • Click the ⚙︎ adjacent to the RGB Sliders dropdown
    • Select Adobe RGB & notice how the values change & the color now appears to be more purple

    Try different profile & values as your time & interest permit but notice that once a different profile is selected even switching back to the previous profile doesn't restore the same values you entered :-)

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  3. John Korchok 232.4K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2020-07-18T17:21:27+00:00

    That's Apple protecting their a** from lawsuits by restricting who you can install software from. Here is Apple's page on how to fix this: Open a Mac app from an unidentified developer

    There are also lots of other color pickers out there that do a similar thing. I'll have to do some research and update the article.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-07-18T09:14:38+00:00

    Hi John,

    I have been trying to install the developer colour picker but when I try to use it in PPT I get this error message.

    '“DeveloperColorPicker.colorPicker” cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified.'

    and I can't proceed unless I delete the software.

    See screengrab too. Is there a way to override this message/warning, that you know of,so that I can install the software?

    Thanks

    Dot & Peg

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  5. John Korchok 232.4K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2020-07-17T20:37:29+00:00

    This is a known problem. The solution is to download a non-color-managed color picker that's aimed at web developers. Here's my article on the subject: Mac PowerPoint: Accurate Colors - Best Practices

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