The conversion of Munsell codes to RGB is not appropriate at certain high value and chroma levels as the range of RGB values is in effect not large enough to cover all of the possible Munsell values, but within the range of colours found within Scottish soils this was not found to be an issue. The same issue is not for the CIELab colour coordinate system, which was also used and for which values can be derived for any Munsell colour.Most soils in Scotland occupy the lower value and chroma ranges of the hues Y and YR, with a smaller number of samples being of hue R, G, GY, G and BG. Soils in other parts of the world occupy a wider range of Munsell colour codes than in Scotland, but is it thought that very few would fall outside the range of colours possible using the RGB system, so the methodology developed here would still be appropriate. Problems with converting Munsell colour codes to the RGB system occur generally with high Value numbers (i.e. extremely pale), which is relatively rare although not unseen.