Chromaforge
Made for print designers

About Chromaforge

A precision colour studio for designers who care about how their work looks once it leaves the screen.

What it does

Type a HEX value, get accurate RGB and CMYK readings, plus a side-by-side preview of how that colour will reproduce on three different output paths — a calibrated monitor, a professional offset press (FOGRA39 coated), and a consumer colour laser printer.

Beyond the swatch, Chromaforge generates six classic harmony palettes (complementary, split-complementary, analogous, triadic, tetradic/square and double-complementary), suggests five CMYK-safe neighbour colours, and lets you push the active colour through tint, shade, tone, saturation, hue and brightness sliders with live print soft-proofing.

Why it exists

Most colour tools online stop at the screen. As a print designer, the question that actually matters is: will this still look right on paper? Bright sRGB colours often clip badly in CMYK, pastels mush together on consumer toner, and shadows pick up unwanted warm casts. Chromaforge surfaces those shifts before you commit to the press cheque.

Under the hood

Press profileFOGRA39 · Coated · GCR 35% · TIL 320%
Press dot gain13% on coated stock
Home laser sim−15% global sat · pastel + cream mute · warm shadows
Colour spacessRGB · HSL · HSV · CMYK round-trip
RenderingPure client-side · no server, no tracking of palettes
StorageTheme preference only · browser localStorage

All calculations run in your browser. Your colours never leave your device.

Who built it

Chromaforge is an independent project by a small team of designers and engineers who wanted a colour reference they could actually trust before sending artwork to print. Feedback, bug reports and palette requests are welcome at hello@freecmyk.com.

Made with Emergent