Adobe Color Picker 2019: Decimal places possible in InDesign and Illustrator

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Adobe has updated its colour picker in the 2019 version. Especially in Adobe InDesign 2019, decimal places are now possible for LAB and CMYK during colour input, which is a long-desired feature especially in the high-end colour area. Up to now it was already possible in Adobe InDesign to enter colour values e.g. in CMYK with decimal places and to write them into the PDF during PDF export, but only integer values were displayed.

In Adobe InDesign 2019, three decimal places can now be entered for LAB and CMYK and can also be read out again. However, these values are not adopted in the automatic labelling of the colour fields, although this can always be adjusted manually.

In Adobe InDesign 2019 können jetzt bei CMYK und LAB Werte mit bis zu 3 Nachkommastellen eingegeben werden.
In Adobe InDesign 2019, values with up to 3 decimal places can now be entered for CMYK and LAB.

Also in Adobe Illustrator 2019 CMYK inputs with decimal places are now possible, although only two decimal places are possible here. With LAB, only an integer entry is still possible.

Adobe Illustrator 2019 Farbwähler CMYK Eingabe mit zwei Nachkommastellen
Adobe Illustrator 2019 Color Picker CMYK Input with two decimal places
Adobe Illustrator 2019 Farbwähler LAB Eingabe nur ohne Nachkommastellen möglich
Adobe Illustrator 2019 Color Picker LAB Input only possible without decimal places

Only Adobe Photoshop still does not allow any decimal places, but only whole numbers, it does not matter whether the file is in 8Bit or 16Bit. This applies equally to LAB, RGB, CMYK and grayscale: In none of the colour systems is a specification with decimal places allowed.

Adobe Photoshop 2019 Farbwähler CMYK LAB Eingabe ohne Nachkommastellen
Adobe Photoshop 2019 Color Picker CMYK LAB Input without decimal places

It is not really clear why only in some software solutions Adobe allows decimal places in colour definitions. But InDesign is clearly more important here than Photoshop and Illustrator; possibly because it is the last software in the production chain that has to merge data from different sources, and so the highest requirements apply here.

The import of ASE colour swatch data was not accelerated, the 2040 colour swatches of the freieFarbe e.V. CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas take almost 2 minutes even on a current Macbook Pro. But the colour swatches are now displayed with full decimal values; a real improvement for the user who also needs high-precision colour data.

Adobe InDesign 2019 Import von freieFarbe CIELAB HLC Farbatlas ASE Farbwerten in LAB
Adobe InDesign 2019 Import of freieFarbe CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas ASE colour values in LAB

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