Recently there’s been a few rumours floating around the web about Purple coloured Zunes, backed up by pictures from the official Zune.net websites no less, with what at first sight appears to be a genuinely Purple coloured Zune.

But I was sceptical. Only recently I’d gone through the Zune software and found many new Zune colour combos, and yet no Purple? Surely if a Purple Zune was destined to come out soon it would join its other sibling colours in the Zune software? So I decided to do some digging around of my own and see what was really going on…

And alas, unfortunately it turns out there are no Zune’s of this awesome colour (yet), so what’s up with the pictures then?

Well, its all down to a technical colour mix up, which I’ve explained in relative detail after the break…

What it boils down too, essentially, is a colour mix up. In the world of computing you have two types of colour models, CMYK and RGB.

In RGB, all colours are made up from different shades of Red, Green and Blue mixed together. However, in CMYK, colours are made up of cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black), RGB is used mostly on computers, whilst CMYK is used commercially, as it saves money and ink whilst printing products. Understandably so, Microsoft produce the majority of their press images using the CMYK colour model.

However, as computers themselves use RGB generally, many imaging programs do not properly render colours in CMYK images, instead trying to render the image data in RGB format, leading to some colour discrepancies. However, sometimes even programs that DO support CMYK render colours in RGB unless specifically told to do otherwise.

If you didn’t quite get that, never mind, lets take a more practical look into it.

Exhibit A: A normal Microsoft press image opened in a program that support CMYK. Everything looks normal.

Exhibit B: The same press image opened up in a program that DOES NOT support CMYK. As you can see… the Red has turned a shade of purple, similar to those seen in the Zune.Net images.

Comparing this to the other Purple image on zune.net, you can see that this is more or less the same colour.

In fact, if you need any more convincing, Kmvargo from Zunited.net has posted a photo taken from a Zune brochure… where the colours are as they should be!

So why only the mix up on these two images? We can’t be entirely too sure. Note that both purple images are of the same girl, with presumably the same Zune, with the same slightly off colour skin. Maybe the Zune.net web team forgot to change the colour pallet to CMYK whilst doing these images? We probably won’t ever know for sure, but rest assured, for now at least, there is no impending arrival of a purple Zune (But hey, at least you’ve got all those other colours I found!)