RGB to CMYK and back algorithm

As Lea Verou said you should make use of color space information because there isn’t an algorithm to map from RGB to CMYK. Adobe has some ICC color profiles available for download1, but I’m not sure how they are licensed.

Once you have the color profiles something like the following would do the job:

import java.awt.color.ColorSpace;
import java.awt.color.ICC_ColorSpace;
import java.awt.color.ICC_Profile;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Arrays;


public class ColorConv {
    final static String pathToCMYKProfile = "C:\\UncoatedFOGRA29.icc";

    public static float[] rgbToCmyk(float... rgb) throws IOException {
        if (rgb.length != 3) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException();
        }
        ColorSpace instance = new ICC_ColorSpace(ICC_Profile.getInstance(pathToCMYKProfile));
        float[] fromRGB = instance.fromRGB(rgb);
        return fromRGB;
    }
    public static float[] cmykToRgb(float... cmyk) throws IOException {
        if (cmyk.length != 4) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException();
        }
        ColorSpace instance = new ICC_ColorSpace(ICC_Profile.getInstance(pathToCMYKProfile));
        float[] fromRGB = instance.toRGB(cmyk);
        return fromRGB;
    }

    public static void main(String... args) {
        try {
            float[] rgbToCmyk = rgbToCmyk(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f);
            System.out.println(Arrays.toString(rgbToCmyk));
            System.out.println(Arrays.toString(cmykToRgb(rgbToCmyk[0], rgbToCmyk[1], rgbToCmyk[2], rgbToCmyk[3])));
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}