A Pokémon of a Different Color
Source: Hacker News
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A Pokémon of a Different Color
- Post author: By verive.m
- Post date: February 13, 2026
Compare the two images below.
Do you notice a difference? The image on the right appears “yellower” than the image on the left, which looks more goldenrod by comparison.
The first Pikachu is from the Pokemon.com Pokédex, while the second is from the Pokemon.co.jp equivalent.
What gives?
Color spaces
If you’re reading this on a computer or phone screen, as most of you are, each pixel on that screen is likely composed of three colors: red, green, and blue. By adjusting the intensity of each color, millions of colors can be seen on your screen. This is the RGB color model.
For color printing, however, a different color model is used. If you’ve ever had a color printer and ran out of ink, you’ll likely know it uses four colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. This is because printers use the CMYK color model (K stands for “key”; I grew up assuming it was the last letter in “black”, instead of B to avoid confusion with “blue”).
I just so happen to have the PSD file for the Pikachu image above, so let’s open it in Affinity and see what it says.
Let’s break this part down.
- 1504 × 1431 px is the resolution of the image: 1,504 pixels wide by 1,431 pixels tall.
- 2.15 MP is the total count of pixels in the image: 1,504 × 1,431 = 2,152,224 pixels, or 2.15 megapixels.
- CMYK is the color space (as discussed above), with the “A” standing for alpha, the layer which defines the transparency levels of the image.
- The 8 refers to the number of bits per color. This image has 8 bits per color, allowing each color (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) to have up to 256 possible values.
- U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 is the color profile. What’s a color profile, you ask? What a great segue into the next section…
Color profiles
(my apologies to anyone who knows color theory, this is both overly simplified and probably a bit wrong)
Remember how the pixels on your screen are comprised of red, green, and blue components? What are the chances that every single screen—including yours—has perfectly balanced vibrancy and perfectly pure colors? Given the extremely low chances of getting it perfect, color profiles are used to both balance out the monitor’s colors and to create common reference points for images to look the same on different screens. The same basic concept exists for printers; just think ink instead of light.
For RGB, things are relatively simple, as efforts to balance colors on screens are fairly recent. The sRGB color space was developed in the 1990s as a “lowest common denominator” for colors shown on a CRT monitor (and the practically identical BT.709 was developed for HDTV). This became the standard for the Internet as well, and as such, almost all RGB images you’ll come across are sRGB – and if an image doesn’t have a color profile defined, it can be assumed to be sRGB. While there are some other RGB color spaces, like Adobe RGB, ProPhoto, and the expanded scRGB, these likely won’t matter to you unless you’re deep into the world of color theory.
CMYK, however…
The messy world of CMYK profiles
While RGB is simple enough that Wikipedia has a nice comparison table, they don’t even attempt to list out common CMYK color spaces. There are far more CMYK profiles in active use than RGB, and this is primarily because CMYK color matching has been around for a lot longer. Not only did efforts to standardize CMYK outputs begin prior to the electronic age, but computers were color‑matching in print before they were color‑matching on screen. In addition, as graphics can be printed on a variety of materials and those materials interact with color differently, there are specific profiles for the print medium (e.g., coated vs. uncoated paper).
The closest parallel we have to sRGB in the CMYK realm is the profile we saw above: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2. Dating from the turn of the millennium, this is the default CMYK in most graphic‑design software… depending on where you live.
Regional standards
You may have noticed the “U.S.” in the U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 profile name, and this does indeed stand for the United States. While SWOP’s color space is not solely used in the United States, there are other profiles that have been commonly used elsewhere in the world. These include (using abbreviated or organization names for brevity):
- Europe: Euroscale, FOGRA/ISO
- Japan: DIC, Japan Color, JPMA
Profiles by SWOP (and another alliance, GRACoL) are gaining in popularity, but old habits die hard. At time of writing, U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 is generally the default in North America, FOGRA 39 is generally the default in Europe, and Japan Color 2001 Coated is generally the default in Japan.
This couldn’t be our issue, could it? After all, Affinity showed that the Pikachu file uses U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2, right?
Unprofiled ima
# CMYK Color Profiles and Pokémon Images
Remember how for RGB I said, “if an image doesn’t have a color profile defined, it can be assumed to be sRGB”?
Well, with the many different CMYK profiles that isn’t really true… but image‑editing software still needs *something* to work with an image.
## The Unprofiled PSD
Let’s open our Pikachu file again, and – wait, what’s this?
It seems this PSD doesn’t have an embedded profile, so Affinity simply picks my default (U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2, because I’m in the United States). Someone opening the same file in another country might see something different!
## A Tale of Two Pikachu
Since Pokémon originates in Japan, I first assigned the **Japan Color 2001 Coated** profile. After converting that to sRGB:
That’s pretty close to what the official Japanese site (pokemon.co.jp) shows!
Interestingly, the image on the U.S. Pokémon.com Pokédex doesn’t match any of the regional defaults. After some guess‑and‑check, I settled on **U.S. Web Uncoated v2**:
### Slider Comparison
Below is a side‑by‑side comparison (ordered like the Pokédex comparison at the top of the article: U.S. Web Uncoated v2 on the left, Japan Color 2001 Coated on the right).
| U.S. Web Uncoated v2 | Japan Color 2001 Coated |
|----------------------|--------------------------|
|  |  |
## What’s Correct?
**Short answer:** we don’t know!
These aren’t even the only profiles Pokémon has used. Looking through all of the profiled Pokémon PSD files I have:
- **Japan Color 2001 Coated** is the most common.
- **U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2** appears frequently, especially around the *Sun & Moon* era (though inconsistently).
- A dozen other profiles show up, ranging from a basic SWOP profile (used in many *Pokémon Ruby* and *Sapphire* images—some pre‑date Japan Color 2001 Coated) to Euroscale, the newer **Japan Color 2011 Coated**, and even obscure profiles like **TOYO Kaleido V5.0**.
Interestingly, none of the files use **U.S. Web Uncoated v2**—perhaps a graphic designer at The Pokémon Company International has that set as their default!
Without knowing the exact workflow used by Pokémon, Game Freak, or their partners, it’s hard to say which website shows the “intended” sRGB representation, if either is even “correct”. Perhaps both are correct and simply reflect regional variations! 😅
*Thank you to **Moonboy65** for the heads‑up that using the Japan Color 2001 Coated profile seemed to match the pokemon.co.jp images, which led me down the rabbit hole that resulted in this article!*