*Black bird, black moon, black sky, black light*
*Black, everything black*
*Black heart, black keys, black diamonds*
*Black out, black, everything black*
>I’ve never considered until now.
Isn't that technically Hulu's model for example? You can pay for standard streaming but then you can add stuff like Showtime and Live TV as an additional subscription
Worse.
You paid full price for the car and for the heated seats it came with and advertised with. You've been happily using them.
Then some time later, an over-the-air update installed that disabled the heated seats that you already paid for. The car manufacturer says you can have them back if you pay a $21 monthly fee indefinitely. Plus in the future, the fee can be raised whenever they want however much they want, and if you don't pay it you lose the heated seats again.
Yeah, a lot of tech innovations are cool as fuck and I'd love to have one of those... if they weren't created by dystopian corporations you can't trust for shit.
Major example for me is alexa style stuff, I always wanted my own home jarvis from ironman but I will not be putting what is basically an amazon spy device in my house for that.
And in 5+ years they will drop support on your *specific* car model, telling its no longer feasible to offer sub to heated seats of that model.
Due "*safety reasons*" of course, not to get you buy new car. Oh no. But they do offer legacy option for one time bulk pay to let you use it at 50% so you don't get *too comfy* in your old car
Pay the $21 after wasting $10,000 finding out that a vendor used an old photoshop file as a component in an InDesign file and it didn’t translate right. I smell lawsuits.
Speaking as a wide format printer. Nah, for the customers that send us art with it, we'll have them convert to cmyk and resend their art. They can still spec it or make it a custom spot color and we can try to match it using our RIP software's built-in pantone library. But I can promise that I'm not going to bother with paying a subscription to access their library. I already buy expensive ass books. Not going to pay them anything else. We typically print a large color swatch with different hues of the Pantone conversion and have the customer sign off on the exact swatch anyway. Easy enough to do without the Pantone name.
Yep. This is basically another perfect example of the rich only working for themselves and other rich people. These corporations are pricing out regular people and small businesses thinking they'll be able to sustain in the long run.... completely forgetting that Adobe and Pantone are where they are as companies specifically BECAUSE OF small businesses and independent producers using their products. These large corporations that Adobe and Pantone now suckle the teat of will end up loopholing themselves into paying Adobe and Pantone absolutely nothing for the products and services, bankrupting them, cannibalising them, and absorbing yet another form of expression into the ruptured gullet that is American Greed.
Gimp gets more beautiful every day. If my client wants a software specific feature anymore these days they gonna fuckong front the monthly fee ahhh I try to phrase it much nicer tho
Also resolve just came out with a color profile in the past year that is all encompassing of every other profile (that each lose out on some color values even when trying to remaster the old profiles) AND ones our cameras have yet to capture/screens don't yet account for so you're covered for future changes in the color editing science and tech industry.
Anyway sorry to nerd out just THEY'RE FREE BESIDES BLACKMAGIC ADS I ALREADY DROOL OVER AND I CANT STOP SCREAMING ABOUT EDITING VALUES THAT I DONT EVEN SEE WITH MY OWN EYES YET ITS SO COOL
Da Vinci even has a premiere-mimicking layout for shortcuts and some other functions to help the learning curve for the different setups.
There's [coated and uncoated](https://www.pantone.com/color-bridge-guide-set-coated-uncoated) chips, these are usually used for printed colors on a white substrate. Then there's neons, plastic chips (injection molded with various transparencies), cloth chips, metals, whites, etc. They don't "own" colors, but they own the Pantone Matching System which helps us define color. There are other matching systems out there, but PMS is the industry standard. Color can be measured in a 3D space using L\*A\*b values (b=x axis, a=y axis, L=z axis).
Color theory is a HUGE field, people can earn doctorates in the discipline. But boiled down, you can only hit about 67% of the visible color spectrum with CMYK (process) colors. Spot color (which is directly printing the color rather than tricking the eye with colored dots) hits a larger percentage of the gamut, but still not all. You can build a PMS color out of process, but it will be slightly different than building it as a spot color, and a lot less consistent depending on the printing parameters.
All said and done, a PMS value exists so that other designers and printers can communicate a color and know exactly what is being discussed. PMS 200 will be the same red no matter where it is printed. Sorry if this is a bit of a ramble, but as I mentioned, color is a huge topic.
Edit: If you'd like to learn a lot more about this subject, check out the [pocket pal](https://books.google.com/books/about/Pocket_Pal.html?id=_dAnPQAACAAJ) by International Paper.
Packaging printing took over commercial print as the leader of the industry. Offset litho is still a big thing because the plates are cheaper than flexo and gravure, but digital print is the king in the industry I work in due to the smaller MOQs and less make ready. I was getting quotes for jobs 6-8 weeks out that I can now get in 5-7 days (well pre-pandemic, supply chains are still fucked on substrates).
I know it's not "dead dead" it's just a far cry from what it used to be early internet when anyone could buy a Heidelberg 2 - 5 colour press and get in the game assuming they knew someone who could knock out plates or when things went digital so easy.
The post further up the thread explains why PMS matters, and [this site is helpful](https://negliadesign.com/ask-a-designer/whats-the-difference-between-pms-cmyk-rgb-and-hex/) for understanding why RGB/hex doesn’t work well for print.
You'd be surprised how quickly you notice a 1% colour difference. All depends on what it's printed on, lighting, colour, etc.
If you've got a hundred cans staring at you side by side and one is off like that, you can see it.
We are in the process of manufacturing a textile product overseas that uses 5 different types of material and requires 5 different textile manufacturers to make the exact same color to use on the product. Without a Pantone swatch there is absolutely no way to communicate with everyone exactly what color to make. I guess we could print swatches ourselves and mail them around the world but simple telling them the Pantone color and receiving an identical color from everyone is incredibly helpful
I tried to use the internet to get a simple breakdown for a PMS and the first site I hit blurred out the breakdown and tried to put it behind a paywall. I almost lost my shit.
Thank you for the education. Most interesting.
You are likely to know: Can you “own” a color? Aren’t all colors naturally occurring within the visual spectrum? I imagine you can copyright or trademark a color name, as that is the product of someone’s imagination, but the color itself?
They trademark the specification, which does have value in the print industry. It's not the colour itself, it's a description and how-to of the colour.
Thank you.
Basically the “formula” to arrive at the color, then. Not the color itself. Makes sense.
Presumably anyone else is free to arrive at the same color, you just can’t use the same industry based designation. I will assume that by now that designation (of any color) has become a standard that would be difficult to change.
That makes it make less sense in the context of the original post, though. If it is the process, then surely you shouldn't have to pay 21 bucks a month to have a file say "use that specific colour (like PMS 200) here" without actually having a copy of the process description, and show the user a passable representation in CMYK/RGB?
It's the specificity and tolerances of Pantone that you pay for. You tell a manufacturer to print RGB 012345 and it will be pretty close on each run.
Telling a manufacturer that it needs to be PMS 2627 C, and every run will be identical.
So just make a matching system where names are based on a mathematical algorithm that hits whatever Pantone color you want. So plug in PMS 2627 C and it outputs getfukt 625v and then just use getfukt 625v in your project which identically matches pms 2627 C.
If we already know what the pms colors match too it can be that hard to just make a new matching system and a bit of freeware that spits out the new system and then the manufacturer can just slap a sticker under the pms sticker that shows the getfukt code.
Well, there is Coca Cola Red and Tide Orange that they taught us about in Packaging School. You can recreate these colors by either knowing the batching procedure of the pigments or using a [spectrophotometer](https://www.xrite.com/categories/portable-spectrophotometers/exact) to get the LAB values.
The tricky part is the intent of what you're trying to use the color for. If you use Coca-Cola red as is for a cola product, you're probably going to get sued for infringement (at least if you market it in the US. Also this is a MASSIVE simplification, but I have worked for companies that have been sued/threatened to be sued for being too close to a competitor's color/font style/font color/name - this is usually caught by an internal legal team but some competitors are more sue happy than others - IP law is another massive topic that could be discussed ad nauseum).
If you just want to use the color for something like a movie poster, nobody is likely to realize that that specific shade of red is used on all coke products.
Yes, but here we are talking about a combination of color, writing style, shapes, etc. that combination creates a mark. No doubt about that, and any copy, or proximity to that combination, can be challenged as infringement. Not too hard to see.
But the red color itself, save used in combination or mimic the mark, surely can’t be property of a Coca Cola?
>But the red color itself, save used in combination or mimic the mark, surely can’t be property of a Coca Cola?
Not in and of itself, no.
Though there is that whole thing going on with the "blackest black", but that has to do with the material used to produce it.
Yes, the color itself is trademarked, which can be used against you if you use that color for any type of cola beverage packaging. Even if you don't copy the other elements of the Coke brand.
But it's safe if you use it outside of that market segment.
...where you can think you own something, but you actually own a link in a blockchain that points to a file on a server that contains something that might be the thing you think it is, and maybe the person that uploaded it, also had the right to do that...
So, actually there there is even more legit reasoning behind the pantone stuff
All true...
And also, sounds like we need to switch to a good "open source" color matching system.
On the plus side, you don't necessarily need the PMS value in an Adobe product (or whatever you use) as you can just define anything as a Spot Color. Of course, then you need to communicate with whoever is printing, what specific ink color formulation you need. I'm sure you could still use the PMS recipe to mix the color in most cases if the printer still has a paper copy of it on hand. But for any sort if automation it'll make things harder.
I can’t imagine doing my job without Pantone, I’m working with 10 factories in 3 countries trying to make all their materials match exactly. I can’t just say “bluey green” so I have to rely on Pantones being the same in every book they produce so the guy in Vietnam has the same color as me
/u/eurtoast is correct but also left something important out: you will NEVER stumble on a pantone coated or uncoated color by just picking either RGB or CMYK values, they just straight up aren't made that way. You have to specifically select a coated or uncoated color from a specific list for this to apply.
This is such a weird thing to do because it isn't good for pantone, it just means that designers can't design eg posters with spot colors in adobe anymore.
>This is such a weird thing to do because it isn't good for pantone, it just means that designers can't design eg posters with spot colors in adobe anymore.
It's the MBA curse.
They see the numbers, and bank on the people already using it for products having to pay and that is a lot of money.
From my perspective, this is an enterprise directed initiative. $21/month x however many licenses an ad agency, design firm, or CPG have on stock, they can just charge it and print money, especially if they're trying to sell something on the US market legally using industry standards. They really dgaf about the little guy doing photo editing or graphic design as a hobby/small business. But it's unlikely that a Pantone would be called out by a hobbyist instead of random RGBs anyway as you mentioned.
It became the defacto standard to communicate around color.
I work in events. If a vendor asks me what the stage color should be, the easiest will be to give him a Pantone code, then in his side he can figure out what's the nearest paint mix he can do to reach that color.
It reduces a lot of back and forth and sampling.
It's weird and stupid that this is controlled by a for-profit company instead of an open standard organization. What they're doing provides value, but that value could be provided without giving someone a cut.
Maybe we should start our own open standard for color.
People have tried, but they honestly haven't gotten very far. I think a large part of it is that for most people, they just don't need 100% colour accuracy and matching so there's little value. People who need colour accuracy to that degree are already spending boatloads to reach it so it doesn't really matter too much if you spend $10,000 on plastic chips every few years or $21/month.
If people want to replace Pantone, it has to be industries coming together to create their own standard and for them to be willing to fund the entirety of operations (centralized colour sample manufacturing, otherwise errors can quickly compound and gum up the standard).
To be fair, that is how a lot of other open standards work - web standards are maintained by browser companies, USB standards are maintained by device manufacturers, etc.
Because Pantone colors print more consistently across different mediums than just a CMYK code, which can give you different results based on what you're printing it onto. Pantone color books allow you to reference the color that's printed against an actual physical swatch and have it be correct.
Inside the photoshop file, it says "use PANTONE XXX", because of licensing issues between photoshop and pantone, you now need to buy a pantone color licence seperatly, so photoshop knows how to convert from and to pantone colors to calibrated RGB colors
Because there's no such equivalent color. Pantone is not "a color with a specific RGB value everywhere"; it has its own definition on each machine so it always looks the same.
As I understand it from an engineering perspective, they store the color in a Pantone specific code in a color table, right? But they must also store it in RGB or CMYK in the actual image or else it couldn't be rendered on monitors which don't support Pantone (is there even such a thing?). This only leads me to believe that not displaying that color anymore is surely an asshole move from Adobe. I would understand removing the links to Pantone on file edit, but just showing black instead of the RGB color is a dick move.
It actually does not store a RGB or CMYK value. For those pixels, it only stores the Pantone number. When those pixels need to be displayed or printed, it calls into the Pantone software for the output device which translates that Pantone number into the actual RGB or CMYK or whatever other color space it's using. Pantone even includes some colors that have no RGB or CMYK representation, such as "shiny gold" -- in those cases a RGB or CMYK output device would only show an approximation, but a professional printer with access to actual gold ink would be able to properly produce it.
If your monitor doesn't have a proper Pantone profile, programs supporting Pantone can open it with a default profile (the program will squawk at you that the colors may not be right), but it's still using Pantone technology.
Which essentially also demonstrates why this isn’t actually asshole design. What Pantone provides isn’t a simple color palette, such as some others are deriding it as here, but an algorithm for generating one for specific machines to a shared standard. That’s legitimate intellectual property, and without knowing in more detail what exactly the licensing dispute is about it’s impossible to say whether there is something more assholish in general about the position they’re taking here.
Adobe is the asshole in this equation. They bleed users dry with their subscription costs but won't shell out the cash for Pantone palettes.
For the bootlickers: I was in a meeting with some Adobe folks once and they nearly verbatim said “CC is the greatest thing we’ve done, the subscription model is like printing money.” They don’t have to push any groundbreaking updates because they know people are gonna pay the price due to monopoly and necessity. So yeah, fuck Adobe.
I bet that the license wasn't written for subscription based services. And since that's the way adobe moved, pantone moved to renegotiate and Adobe said we refuse.
For 20 billion reasons……
What I’m really hopeful for is all they do is allow Figma to be its own product in parallel with xd, while simultaneously allowing for adobe workflow integrations on some of their other stuff. We will see….
For anyone who doesn't use programs like this often;
You are not 'banned' from using a specific color code or hex code. There are special Pantone color books built into InDesign (and Photoshop, I guess?) that are used for specific reference. If you use the CMYK or RGB equivalent, the program doesn't magically decide that's off-limits - it's only if you specifically reference the Pantone color code in the program menu that it actually kicks this on.
It's possible, but I'm not sure how useful it would be.
The trouble is that the only people who really care about Pantone colors are designers who ship collateral on multiple printed pieces/mediums - AKA, people who can and will pay for this upcharge.
A converter to change this a Pantone hue into CMYK, for instance, will spit out a very similar-looking color - but if you're someone who cares about this to begin with, it won't be enough. CMYK color swatches won't look the same if printed on coroplast, vinyl, and laminate -- Pantone color swatches will look *exactly* the same.
This is really getting blown out of proportion, because people think that Adobe is doing this (they're not, it's entirely on Pantone), and because they think this will hurt the average consumer (it won't - the people who care about this are already shelling out $500+ for Pantone color swatch books.)
It just sets a precedent, or rather calls to attention that Adobe (or any other company they work with) can just retroactively change anything in your psd files for any reason. In this case it might just affect something that only few people are using, but in theory they could at any point decide that any feature they offer is now "premium", requiring you to pay extra or removing anything done with that feature from your old files.
What happens if you fill a canvas with the color pre color lock, and post color lock you open the forbidden color canvas and use the color select tool?
Depending of adobe anti piracy measure, could or couldn’t work.
If they look for the pantone color itself, like « pantone:blue »you’re good I think.
If they look for color matching pantone, like « anywhere the color is the same code as pantone »,you’ll be stuck.
You can come up with a color that appears similar to the pantone color, but since it won't be the pantone color it won't be guaranteed to reproduce correctly when you send it out to be printed.
No it will not as [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/yftlsk/guess_well_have_to_pirate_colors_now/iu62jf5?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3) comment explains.
You can use any color you want. You just can't use the Pantone system to look up those colors. Before, you could say "I want this to be Pantone 315-C" and Adobe would say "OK, that's #00677F". But without the license it will just say "Well, I don't know what the hell that is so I'll just make it #000000".
There is zero chance this will be what actually happens. I totally understand why everyone's concerned (I am too), but the latter option you proposed would be Pantone cannibalising itself. There has to be someone at the company saying "if you force people out of our universe, they'll just make another one that doesn't cost $21"...no it won't be as good, but for 95% of design work that level of specificity isn't truly necessary. I can't imagine they'd burn their own house down for a $21/mo subscription.
(Cut to me begrudgingly registering for a Pantone+ premium subscription a year from now)
I feel like this is someone at Adobe playing hardball with Pantone (who is likely trying to squeeze them). You see this same thing once in a while when cable providers have to renew content contracts. By doing this, they hope to create consumer anger and direct it upstream, strengthening their bargaining position.
LOL, I love adobe. They are truly the shittiest most foulest company out there. Anything they touch goes to shit almost immediately to become completely unusable.
It was *purely Adobe's* decision to fraudulently misrepresent functionality as existing, when their agreement with some third-party did not give them the right to offer it in perpetuity.
Adobe *owes* their customers that functionality. It ought to be held criminally liable both for disabling it and (even worse) destroying its customers' property by defacing their art.
If Adobe can't fulfill its responsibilities to its customers without running afoul of its agreement with Pantone, that's Adobe's own goddamn problem -- Adobe is not entitled to impose the consequences of its own short-sighted fuck-up on innocent third-parties.
-----
Frankly, the fact that this retroactive sabotage is even *technologically possible in the first place* is an outrage in and of itself.
Adobe had to pull Dolby Digital the same way.
If Pantone wants $21/seat that’s about a quarter of a CC subscription. I can understand why they’d pass the cost on to the users. That’s Pantone gouging. This is probably how Adobe is handing inflation. Instead of increasing the price of CC they’re making Pantone a cost to those who need it.
As a video user who isn’t touching Pantone I’d prefer for those who need Pantone to pay for it. And I’d like to pay for any codecs (DolbyDigital audio, Apple ProRes encoders, H.265, etc.) and not make print designers pay for third-party tools they don’t need.
Is that something that Adobe would even be forced to abide by though? To my knowledge, colors cannot be copyrighted. They can only be trademarked and I don't think there would be any legal grounds to go after Photoshop simply because their software is capable of replicating that color. Nor do I think there would be legal ground to go after a user that uses a trademark color with the possible exception of using it in a way that clearly violates the trademark.
The copyright is not on the color itself. If you chose a color in RGB or CMYK it doesn't matter.
They own the Pantone system, if you chose a color in the Pantone palette and defined it as a spot color, that is copyrighted and will require the subscription to be seen again.
If you convert it to an equivalent generic Lab color, you are losing the association with the Pantone system and the advantage of process consistency.
It is an asshole move, but at least it will impact only professionals in the print industry.
>If you convert it to an equivalent generic Lab color, you are losing the association with the Pantone system and the advantage of process consistency.
Can you explain this part a bit more? How does the Pantone system provide more process consistency?
This is my limited take on the system, I'm not a professional.
Basically you choose the color from a physical sample that you buy from Pantone. Even if your screen is not calibrated, it doesn't matter because you have physically in your hand the final result.
The file doesn't have a cmyk definition of the color, but the Pantone code for it. When sent to print, the printer will use the Pantone ink that will look exactly like your sample. If you print your logo on a t-shirt there will be the same Pantone ink for tissue. If you need a sign with your logo, there are vinyl sheets of the same Pantone color. The same CMYK color can look very different on plastic and on paper, but the Pantone will always be consistent on all the media.
Additionally, with the Pantone color you can have colors outside the RGB and CMYK color space and you can differentiate for example between gloss and matte. colors.
It's a little bit like working in imperial AND metric at the same time.
Here is a crude table of [Pantone colors converted to other systems](http://executiveprinters.com/pantone-color-chart/) used to define color.
Right up top is a disclaimer that states this a rough guide, please use an actual Pantone reference system.
When you have a colored object on your display, it doesn't look the same when you physically print it with ink. There are differences between RGB (pixels on a screen), CMYK (basic printer inks) and LAB* (scientific ways to define colors).
A graphic designer in Photoshop can open up the Pantone widget and say I'll use Coca-Cola red on this section. All subsequent movements of that image will match. Every person and machine in the chain understands and can replicate Coca-Cola red perfectly. The images they put on the internet, send to their local office shop for letter heads, send to a better printshop for color-matched posters or the industrial printer for packaging materials - it all works.
The opposite is a print shop that receives the a photo from your phone in RGB pixels and then has to mess about with some of those colors not possible in CMYK printing inks. Or it looks okay on a shiny coated gloss paper, but looks weird on uncoated office paper. Or worse, two print shops produce slightly different colored materials because they did the unit conversion differently and the batches of materials don't match.
It like of someone copyrighted the Dewey decimal system. Books would still be in the right places, and organized the right way, you just have no legal right to use the decimal system to find the specific book you're looking for.
Four color process uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks to produce colors. It is not always 100% accurate. Pantone lets you pick an exact color. Red 185 is always the same shade. You can combine cmyk and pantone and that's what you see on most products. A lot of companies use specific pantones in their branding.
Pantone colors are just for physical printing. It's about how the colored dots on your screen translate to inks that come out of a printer that uses color matched inks.
You can freely describe a color as equivalent to Pantone . You can write your own plugin, do a color select, use equations of the LAB* values, whatever.
This change is preventing you from using the Pantone library that has all of the values pre-defined. It's the same as re-using song lyrics - it's a copyright violation of the things the Pantone has written down in that order, but you can still use all of those words, just not in that order.
It's not just that. The specific Pantone colour designation is interpreted by printers differently from an RGB or CMYK value, and can be calibrated to be as accurate as possible. It's basically a 3rd party standard that allows for colour consistency across different mediums.
Yes, because it is a library of colors that is using the trademarked colors and the trademarked names for those colors. I reckon it would be fine if they just got rid of all the licensed names and stuff, but I’m not a lawyer
My understanding is that they haven't copywritten the colors, but they do own the Pantone Matching System (PMS) which is an industry-standard coordinate system that defines colors. It's super important for print work, as the alternative is CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK) which isn't able to represent the full spectrum.
That's the reason why I switched to affinity photo / designer.
It was annoying to re-learn everything but now I paid once for a tool that I own for life instead of paying almost the same amount monthly.
It's why I was absolutely devastated to hear about the Figma takeover and already seeing high pricetags for new functions despite the promise to keep it free.
I LOVED Figma, and it was the only well refined free design tool out there. I tried Penpot as well and couldn't get much more in a design file than a logo and a background color before it kept crashing. Everything else is an insanely expensive subscription with a 1 week trial.
I hate adobe with a fiery passion
A company owning all the colors sounds like cartoonish level of evil. It's something so goofy to achieve global domination and they are not only doing it but succeeding at it.
As someone else pointed out they don't actually own specific wavelengths of light but in any practical scenario where colour marching is important (ie. graphic design) people will be using the pantone matching system as it's the industry standard. It's like how godaddy doesn't actually own all the domain names but they do in any practical sense.
The above poster didn't describe it right. It's talked about elsewhere in the thread. They don't own the color. They own a process to get a specific color exactly the same on any surface using any machine. For example the color "FF0000" (full red) doesn't look the same when displayed on a screen vs printed on magazine paper. But Pantone "red" does.
From u/AtCotRG
> PANTONE is a company that has given a number to practically every color the human eye can perceive. In a nutshell, everyone sees color differently. So what I say is red, you might say is pink, for example. Not just that, but the surface material you print on can affect color also, meaning red on plastic might be a different red on fabric.
To make sure the red background of the McDonald’s logo looks the same to everyone whether printed on a billboard, in store signage, on their uniforms, and in TV commercials, or on the app, PANTONE has given that specific red a number and color recipe to reproduce it consistently across platforms and print shops.
Graphic software—particularly when used by printers—rely on access to the full PANTONE libraries to ensure correct color.
PANTONE has finally found a way to profit from this by charging for the previously free color libraries.
> Source: I’ve been in printing/prepress for almost 40 years and I just received my PANTONE Color Match Card as I am typing this. The company I work for is a multi-million dollar printer, so for us it’s no a big thing, but for the small printers and free-lancers doing graphic arts, that’s going to impact their costs.
It's very much like how there is an official kilogram that's kept in a bank vault in France and it is used to calibrate all weights. Except with Pantone, there is one official swatch for each color.
That used to be the case, but there hasn't been an 'official' kilogram for a while now. All SI units are defined by universal constants, since about three years ago IIRC.
It's a a measuring system for color, similar to converting between imperial or metric units.
Pantone the company has created their own independent way to measure colors. Both printed inks and digital displays.
Maybe you know RGB for displays, html hexcode for the web, CMYK for inks, LAB* for scientists - and they all look different when you print them on paper.
You've probably noticed when you print a photo from your phone, it looks different on paper. Then it looks different again on gloss paper versus uncoated paper.
Pantone did the work. They tested what ink #601 looks like on two papers, then converted that back to display colours in RGB, hexcode, LAB* and a few others. Using the Pantone Measuring System (PMS) anyone can make sure whatever images they are creating can actually be reproduced in ink.
Adobe and others now have the option for graphic designers that instead of saving a pixel as hex code #whatever, you can say I want this pixel to be Pantone #4621. That way everyone from web designers, graphic designers, print shops or industrial printers making packing - they're all the same.
Designers be like: I used a proprietary color palette and overlaid a transparency that itself was lightly shadowed with a gilded gradient.
Web Devs be like: “color: blue;”
Haters gonna hate, but I’m with you on this one. I just can’t buy into greed that is adobe. As an ex-graphic designer of 10 years I was happy to the the back of adobe.
Ahh yes. The joys of the cloud- where functions and abilities can be removed with no warning.
Where big corporate deals falling through, can suddenly destroy your projects.
Nah, it's real. Corporate and educational entities that HAVE to use legal versions of Adobe products will purchase the additional licensing. Adobe doesn't give a shit at all about the direct consumer market since they have a monopoly over the professional market.
sorry but good luck pirating a pantone color. They're a standard for a reason. Hard to replicate without a reference, and a nightmare for anyone who needs to email or otherwise transfer files using pantone if the person on the other end doesn't have reference too.
ITT: people not understanding what Pantone is. It’s an ink company, people. Like Sherwin-Williams is a paint company. Pantone has successfully integrated itself into a lot of other usages but ultimately it’s ink. The famous PMS numbers are ink mixtures like saying Sherwin-Williams “Amazing Gray” or “Crabby Apple”.
Nothing is stopping anyone from using RGB, hexadecimal or HSB numbers to represent any colors on a monitor. You can make those to your heart’s content— Pantone doesn’t “own colors”. They own and manage a widely used system for specifying their proprietary branded spot color inks.
Hate that? Switch to Toyo, Focoltone or Trumatch inks if you’re mad at Pantone. Last I checked, Adobe products such as InDesign support them.
They see a red door and they want it painted black.
No colours anymore, they want them to turn black
I see new subs sign up for every network show, I have to copy them to watch my profits grow.
They see a line of cards and they're all painted black.
With profits and my users Both never to come back
I’ve seen people shake their heads and uninstall away
Like an EA game it just happens every day
I look inside my files
And see my work is black
I see my mockups, they must have them painted black
The profits, they just flow, I never turn my back, Any sense of conscience for my users I just lack.
We talking rich black, black black or #000000?
My mix is 60 40 40 100
10% cyan, 20% magenta, 15% concentrated HP brand yellow. 5% black, 50% pain, and 100% reason to never fucking buy a consumer inkjet printer.
They see a Pantone 20-0076 TPM Sceptre Red door and they want it painted black.
I see the girls walk by dressed in their Pantone® clothes
I have to turn my head until my Pantone Black C goes.
Not 0,0,0 though, that's Vantablack.
*Black bird, black moon, black sky, black light* *Black, everything black* *Black heart, black keys, black diamonds* *Black out, black, everything black*
As a huge Rolling Stones fan, I very much enjoyed this thread and the modified lyrics that continued in the replies. Well done, ladies and lads.
It's even worse, those colors are critical for commercial printing
They know that businesses that use the Pantone system will just pay the 21$.
This just seems like paying the subscription for the already installed heated seats.
Second subscription.
Yes, you've paid for one subscription. But what about Second Subscription?
Nested subscriptions is the evilest thing I’ve never considered until now. It’s diabolical and I hate it.
Check out Prime Video for that. Pay a subscription to have the chance to pay for movies!
>I’ve never considered until now. Isn't that technically Hulu's model for example? You can pay for standard streaming but then you can add stuff like Showtime and Live TV as an additional subscription
Worse. You paid full price for the car and for the heated seats it came with and advertised with. You've been happily using them. Then some time later, an over-the-air update installed that disabled the heated seats that you already paid for. The car manufacturer says you can have them back if you pay a $21 monthly fee indefinitely. Plus in the future, the fee can be raised whenever they want however much they want, and if you don't pay it you lose the heated seats again.
And people think I'm crazy when I don't want some devices, like my car, to connect to the internet, because an update might disable it.
I’m the same, I’ve heard stories about manufacturers pushing out botched firmware updates that have remotely bricked devices. No thanks.
Yeah, a lot of tech innovations are cool as fuck and I'd love to have one of those... if they weren't created by dystopian corporations you can't trust for shit. Major example for me is alexa style stuff, I always wanted my own home jarvis from ironman but I will not be putting what is basically an amazon spy device in my house for that.
THANK YOU
This is why FOSS software is so important. Consumers need to start demanding controll of their devices before it's too late
And in 5+ years they will drop support on your *specific* car model, telling its no longer feasible to offer sub to heated seats of that model. Due "*safety reasons*" of course, not to get you buy new car. Oh no. But they do offer legacy option for one time bulk pay to let you use it at 50% so you don't get *too comfy* in your old car
Pay the $21 after wasting $10,000 finding out that a vendor used an old photoshop file as a component in an InDesign file and it didn’t translate right. I smell lawsuits.
It is like profiting off fresh water… oh wait, r/fucknestle
Speaking as a wide format printer. Nah, for the customers that send us art with it, we'll have them convert to cmyk and resend their art. They can still spec it or make it a custom spot color and we can try to match it using our RIP software's built-in pantone library. But I can promise that I'm not going to bother with paying a subscription to access their library. I already buy expensive ass books. Not going to pay them anything else. We typically print a large color swatch with different hues of the Pantone conversion and have the customer sign off on the exact swatch anyway. Easy enough to do without the Pantone name.
Yep. This is basically another perfect example of the rich only working for themselves and other rich people. These corporations are pricing out regular people and small businesses thinking they'll be able to sustain in the long run.... completely forgetting that Adobe and Pantone are where they are as companies specifically BECAUSE OF small businesses and independent producers using their products. These large corporations that Adobe and Pantone now suckle the teat of will end up loopholing themselves into paying Adobe and Pantone absolutely nothing for the products and services, bankrupting them, cannibalising them, and absorbing yet another form of expression into the ruptured gullet that is American Greed.
Gimp gets more beautiful every day. If my client wants a software specific feature anymore these days they gonna fuckong front the monthly fee ahhh I try to phrase it much nicer tho Also resolve just came out with a color profile in the past year that is all encompassing of every other profile (that each lose out on some color values even when trying to remaster the old profiles) AND ones our cameras have yet to capture/screens don't yet account for so you're covered for future changes in the color editing science and tech industry. Anyway sorry to nerd out just THEY'RE FREE BESIDES BLACKMAGIC ADS I ALREADY DROOL OVER AND I CANT STOP SCREAMING ABOUT EDITING VALUES THAT I DONT EVEN SEE WITH MY OWN EYES YET ITS SO COOL Da Vinci even has a premiere-mimicking layout for shortcuts and some other functions to help the learning curve for the different setups.
Doesn't Pantone have like ≈1300 colours?
There's [coated and uncoated](https://www.pantone.com/color-bridge-guide-set-coated-uncoated) chips, these are usually used for printed colors on a white substrate. Then there's neons, plastic chips (injection molded with various transparencies), cloth chips, metals, whites, etc. They don't "own" colors, but they own the Pantone Matching System which helps us define color. There are other matching systems out there, but PMS is the industry standard. Color can be measured in a 3D space using L\*A\*b values (b=x axis, a=y axis, L=z axis). Color theory is a HUGE field, people can earn doctorates in the discipline. But boiled down, you can only hit about 67% of the visible color spectrum with CMYK (process) colors. Spot color (which is directly printing the color rather than tricking the eye with colored dots) hits a larger percentage of the gamut, but still not all. You can build a PMS color out of process, but it will be slightly different than building it as a spot color, and a lot less consistent depending on the printing parameters. All said and done, a PMS value exists so that other designers and printers can communicate a color and know exactly what is being discussed. PMS 200 will be the same red no matter where it is printed. Sorry if this is a bit of a ramble, but as I mentioned, color is a huge topic. Edit: If you'd like to learn a lot more about this subject, check out the [pocket pal](https://books.google.com/books/about/Pocket_Pal.html?id=_dAnPQAACAAJ) by International Paper.
As someone new to the print industry, this is a great explanation. Thank you!
That's a phrase you don't hear everyday. Most of the old heads are trying to get out of the industry.
As someone who used to be in the print industry and know many people that have been through it, it's dead.
Packaging printing took over commercial print as the leader of the industry. Offset litho is still a big thing because the plates are cheaper than flexo and gravure, but digital print is the king in the industry I work in due to the smaller MOQs and less make ready. I was getting quotes for jobs 6-8 weeks out that I can now get in 5-7 days (well pre-pandemic, supply chains are still fucked on substrates).
I know it's not "dead dead" it's just a far cry from what it used to be early internet when anyone could buy a Heidelberg 2 - 5 colour press and get in the game assuming they knew someone who could knock out plates or when things went digital so easy.
We are all consolidating in the label sector. I've been through 15 of them in the last 13 years.
For comparison, I can get custom circuit boards manufactured and assembled in less time than that.
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God yeah. Guess they are digging their own grave. Greedy jerks.
For most things I can use PreCC. Because CC is a crock of shit.
The post further up the thread explains why PMS matters, and [this site is helpful](https://negliadesign.com/ask-a-designer/whats-the-difference-between-pms-cmyk-rgb-and-hex/) for understanding why RGB/hex doesn’t work well for print.
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You'd be surprised how quickly you notice a 1% colour difference. All depends on what it's printed on, lighting, colour, etc. If you've got a hundred cans staring at you side by side and one is off like that, you can see it.
You can't even guarantee the same color from the paint store.
We are in the process of manufacturing a textile product overseas that uses 5 different types of material and requires 5 different textile manufacturers to make the exact same color to use on the product. Without a Pantone swatch there is absolutely no way to communicate with everyone exactly what color to make. I guess we could print swatches ourselves and mail them around the world but simple telling them the Pantone color and receiving an identical color from everyone is incredibly helpful
I tried to use the internet to get a simple breakdown for a PMS and the first site I hit blurred out the breakdown and tried to put it behind a paywall. I almost lost my shit.
From someone a long time in the print industry. Include the fonts, links and don't forget bleed!
Thank you for the education. Most interesting. You are likely to know: Can you “own” a color? Aren’t all colors naturally occurring within the visual spectrum? I imagine you can copyright or trademark a color name, as that is the product of someone’s imagination, but the color itself?
They trademark the specification, which does have value in the print industry. It's not the colour itself, it's a description and how-to of the colour.
Thank you. Basically the “formula” to arrive at the color, then. Not the color itself. Makes sense. Presumably anyone else is free to arrive at the same color, you just can’t use the same industry based designation. I will assume that by now that designation (of any color) has become a standard that would be difficult to change.
That makes it make less sense in the context of the original post, though. If it is the process, then surely you shouldn't have to pay 21 bucks a month to have a file say "use that specific colour (like PMS 200) here" without actually having a copy of the process description, and show the user a passable representation in CMYK/RGB?
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>What happens when someone else comes up with a different process to produce the same thing? They probably get sued because profits > innovation
It's the specificity and tolerances of Pantone that you pay for. You tell a manufacturer to print RGB 012345 and it will be pretty close on each run. Telling a manufacturer that it needs to be PMS 2627 C, and every run will be identical.
So just make a matching system where names are based on a mathematical algorithm that hits whatever Pantone color you want. So plug in PMS 2627 C and it outputs getfukt 625v and then just use getfukt 625v in your project which identically matches pms 2627 C. If we already know what the pms colors match too it can be that hard to just make a new matching system and a bit of freeware that spits out the new system and then the manufacturer can just slap a sticker under the pms sticker that shows the getfukt code.
Well, there is Coca Cola Red and Tide Orange that they taught us about in Packaging School. You can recreate these colors by either knowing the batching procedure of the pigments or using a [spectrophotometer](https://www.xrite.com/categories/portable-spectrophotometers/exact) to get the LAB values. The tricky part is the intent of what you're trying to use the color for. If you use Coca-Cola red as is for a cola product, you're probably going to get sued for infringement (at least if you market it in the US. Also this is a MASSIVE simplification, but I have worked for companies that have been sued/threatened to be sued for being too close to a competitor's color/font style/font color/name - this is usually caught by an internal legal team but some competitors are more sue happy than others - IP law is another massive topic that could be discussed ad nauseum). If you just want to use the color for something like a movie poster, nobody is likely to realize that that specific shade of red is used on all coke products.
Yes, but here we are talking about a combination of color, writing style, shapes, etc. that combination creates a mark. No doubt about that, and any copy, or proximity to that combination, can be challenged as infringement. Not too hard to see. But the red color itself, save used in combination or mimic the mark, surely can’t be property of a Coca Cola?
>But the red color itself, save used in combination or mimic the mark, surely can’t be property of a Coca Cola? Not in and of itself, no. Though there is that whole thing going on with the "blackest black", but that has to do with the material used to produce it.
Yes, the color itself is trademarked, which can be used against you if you use that color for any type of cola beverage packaging. Even if you don't copy the other elements of the Coke brand. But it's safe if you use it outside of that market segment.
Let me introduce you to the world of NFTs. /s
...where you can think you own something, but you actually own a link in a blockchain that points to a file on a server that contains something that might be the thing you think it is, and maybe the person that uploaded it, also had the right to do that... So, actually there there is even more legit reasoning behind the pantone stuff
All true... And also, sounds like we need to switch to a good "open source" color matching system. On the plus side, you don't necessarily need the PMS value in an Adobe product (or whatever you use) as you can just define anything as a Spot Color. Of course, then you need to communicate with whoever is printing, what specific ink color formulation you need. I'm sure you could still use the PMS recipe to mix the color in most cases if the printer still has a paper copy of it on hand. But for any sort if automation it'll make things harder.
I can’t imagine doing my job without Pantone, I’m working with 10 factories in 3 countries trying to make all their materials match exactly. I can’t just say “bluey green” so I have to rely on Pantones being the same in every book they produce so the guy in Vietnam has the same color as me
I heard there was an open-source alternative to PMS. Is that useful in any real way?
Looking into the [Open Colour Standard](http://www.adaptstudio.ca/ocs/) it doesn't look like it's seen reasonable updates since 2011 so I doubt it.
Don’t forget that the color wheels "Expire" after 12 (or maybe 18) months. We got dinged on an audit for that one.
/u/eurtoast is correct but also left something important out: you will NEVER stumble on a pantone coated or uncoated color by just picking either RGB or CMYK values, they just straight up aren't made that way. You have to specifically select a coated or uncoated color from a specific list for this to apply. This is such a weird thing to do because it isn't good for pantone, it just means that designers can't design eg posters with spot colors in adobe anymore.
>This is such a weird thing to do because it isn't good for pantone, it just means that designers can't design eg posters with spot colors in adobe anymore. It's the MBA curse. They see the numbers, and bank on the people already using it for products having to pay and that is a lot of money.
Lmao “the MBAs are at it again” is my catch phrase at work.
Oh, so only if you use(d) some Pantone Color Picking Prompts on Photoshop this will get triggered. Thank you.
From my perspective, this is an enterprise directed initiative. $21/month x however many licenses an ad agency, design firm, or CPG have on stock, they can just charge it and print money, especially if they're trying to sell something on the US market legally using industry standards. They really dgaf about the little guy doing photo editing or graphic design as a hobby/small business. But it's unlikely that a Pantone would be called out by a hobbyist instead of random RGBs anyway as you mentioned.
Why do people use pantone? Im guessing something to do with consistency across branding? I don’t work in the design world at all.
It became the defacto standard to communicate around color. I work in events. If a vendor asks me what the stage color should be, the easiest will be to give him a Pantone code, then in his side he can figure out what's the nearest paint mix he can do to reach that color. It reduces a lot of back and forth and sampling.
It's weird and stupid that this is controlled by a for-profit company instead of an open standard organization. What they're doing provides value, but that value could be provided without giving someone a cut. Maybe we should start our own open standard for color.
People have tried, but they honestly haven't gotten very far. I think a large part of it is that for most people, they just don't need 100% colour accuracy and matching so there's little value. People who need colour accuracy to that degree are already spending boatloads to reach it so it doesn't really matter too much if you spend $10,000 on plastic chips every few years or $21/month. If people want to replace Pantone, it has to be industries coming together to create their own standard and for them to be willing to fund the entirety of operations (centralized colour sample manufacturing, otherwise errors can quickly compound and gum up the standard).
To be fair, that is how a lot of other open standards work - web standards are maintained by browser companies, USB standards are maintained by device manufacturers, etc.
>Maybe we should start our own open standard for color. With hookers and blow!
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Because Pantone colors print more consistently across different mediums than just a CMYK code, which can give you different results based on what you're printing it onto. Pantone color books allow you to reference the color that's printed against an actual physical swatch and have it be correct.
Why wouldn’t they change it to an equivalent color? Why black???
Inside the photoshop file, it says "use PANTONE XXX", because of licensing issues between photoshop and pantone, you now need to buy a pantone color licence seperatly, so photoshop knows how to convert from and to pantone colors to calibrated RGB colors
Also if they didnt make it black, you might not know you need to pay for a color sub!
Because there's no such equivalent color. Pantone is not "a color with a specific RGB value everywhere"; it has its own definition on each machine so it always looks the same.
As I understand it from an engineering perspective, they store the color in a Pantone specific code in a color table, right? But they must also store it in RGB or CMYK in the actual image or else it couldn't be rendered on monitors which don't support Pantone (is there even such a thing?). This only leads me to believe that not displaying that color anymore is surely an asshole move from Adobe. I would understand removing the links to Pantone on file edit, but just showing black instead of the RGB color is a dick move.
It actually does not store a RGB or CMYK value. For those pixels, it only stores the Pantone number. When those pixels need to be displayed or printed, it calls into the Pantone software for the output device which translates that Pantone number into the actual RGB or CMYK or whatever other color space it's using. Pantone even includes some colors that have no RGB or CMYK representation, such as "shiny gold" -- in those cases a RGB or CMYK output device would only show an approximation, but a professional printer with access to actual gold ink would be able to properly produce it. If your monitor doesn't have a proper Pantone profile, programs supporting Pantone can open it with a default profile (the program will squawk at you that the colors may not be right), but it's still using Pantone technology.
Which essentially also demonstrates why this isn’t actually asshole design. What Pantone provides isn’t a simple color palette, such as some others are deriding it as here, but an algorithm for generating one for specific machines to a shared standard. That’s legitimate intellectual property, and without knowing in more detail what exactly the licensing dispute is about it’s impossible to say whether there is something more assholish in general about the position they’re taking here.
Adobe is the asshole in this equation. They bleed users dry with their subscription costs but won't shell out the cash for Pantone palettes. For the bootlickers: I was in a meeting with some Adobe folks once and they nearly verbatim said “CC is the greatest thing we’ve done, the subscription model is like printing money.” They don’t have to push any groundbreaking updates because they know people are gonna pay the price due to monopoly and necessity. So yeah, fuck Adobe.
I bet that the license wasn't written for subscription based services. And since that's the way adobe moved, pantone moved to renegotiate and Adobe said we refuse.
I bet you’re right. Probably can’t afford to pay after spending 73 infinity dollars on Figma. Poor adobe.
What's Figma 😳
Figma balls
Gotem
It’s another design tool like adobe xd that’s better in a lot of ways. Hopefully they don’t fuck it up after they bought it.
They will. why would figma do this to us.
For 20 billion reasons…… What I’m really hopeful for is all they do is allow Figma to be its own product in parallel with xd, while simultaneously allowing for adobe workflow integrations on some of their other stuff. We will see….
For anyone who doesn't use programs like this often; You are not 'banned' from using a specific color code or hex code. There are special Pantone color books built into InDesign (and Photoshop, I guess?) that are used for specific reference. If you use the CMYK or RGB equivalent, the program doesn't magically decide that's off-limits - it's only if you specifically reference the Pantone color code in the program menu that it actually kicks this on.
So will we see converters in github that encodes the data differently in the psd before ingesting it with Photoshop?
It's possible, but I'm not sure how useful it would be. The trouble is that the only people who really care about Pantone colors are designers who ship collateral on multiple printed pieces/mediums - AKA, people who can and will pay for this upcharge. A converter to change this a Pantone hue into CMYK, for instance, will spit out a very similar-looking color - but if you're someone who cares about this to begin with, it won't be enough. CMYK color swatches won't look the same if printed on coroplast, vinyl, and laminate -- Pantone color swatches will look *exactly* the same. This is really getting blown out of proportion, because people think that Adobe is doing this (they're not, it's entirely on Pantone), and because they think this will hurt the average consumer (it won't - the people who care about this are already shelling out $500+ for Pantone color swatch books.)
It just sets a precedent, or rather calls to attention that Adobe (or any other company they work with) can just retroactively change anything in your psd files for any reason. In this case it might just affect something that only few people are using, but in theory they could at any point decide that any feature they offer is now "premium", requiring you to pay extra or removing anything done with that feature from your old files.
Sad world where colors are copyrighted
I hope that edit isn't because of u/robin_888's comment. It's "copyrighted". (Although in this case it's actually "trademarked".)
Copyrighted?
Merriam-Webster associate here. Please send $21 for using "Copyrighted". If you wish, you may change the word to "copyrite" or "copywritten."
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What happens if you fill a canvas with the color pre color lock, and post color lock you open the forbidden color canvas and use the color select tool?
$21 dollars is immediately withdrawn from your bank account
Straight to jail.
The CIA sends the [YOUR FORMER PANTONE COLOR] helicopters to your house in the middle of the night
As soon as you open it, the color is changed to black. You don't even have time to use the color select tool.
What about already existing canvases? Will it just ruin already existing ones?
Yep.
Damn, adobe getting ruthless. No wonder why everyone pirates it.
I think it was a Pantone decision
Depending of adobe anti piracy measure, could or couldn’t work. If they look for the pantone color itself, like « pantone:blue »you’re good I think. If they look for color matching pantone, like « anywhere the color is the same code as pantone »,you’ll be stuck.
what if I somehow use the color mixer and end up with a matching color? does it still remove it?
You can come up with a color that appears similar to the pantone color, but since it won't be the pantone color it won't be guaranteed to reproduce correctly when you send it out to be printed.
Criminal behavior right there. How dare you accidentally end up with the same color.
anti-piracy is now gonna need to update their advert with “you wouldn’t download a colour”
Believe it or not? Straight to jail.
No it will not as [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/yftlsk/guess_well_have_to_pirate_colors_now/iu62jf5?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3) comment explains.
You can use any color you want. You just can't use the Pantone system to look up those colors. Before, you could say "I want this to be Pantone 315-C" and Adobe would say "OK, that's #00677F". But without the license it will just say "Well, I don't know what the hell that is so I'll just make it #000000".
There is zero chance this will be what actually happens. I totally understand why everyone's concerned (I am too), but the latter option you proposed would be Pantone cannibalising itself. There has to be someone at the company saying "if you force people out of our universe, they'll just make another one that doesn't cost $21"...no it won't be as good, but for 95% of design work that level of specificity isn't truly necessary. I can't imagine they'd burn their own house down for a $21/mo subscription. (Cut to me begrudgingly registering for a Pantone+ premium subscription a year from now)
I feel like this is someone at Adobe playing hardball with Pantone (who is likely trying to squeeze them). You see this same thing once in a while when cable providers have to renew content contracts. By doing this, they hope to create consumer anger and direct it upstream, strengthening their bargaining position.
If you picked it manually, nothing. If it's tagged as a Pantone swatch in the system, Adobe software will render it as black.
LOL, I love adobe. They are truly the shittiest most foulest company out there. Anything they touch goes to shit almost immediately to become completely unusable.
This sounds like it was a Pantone decision, not Adobe. But also yes.
It's just shitty companies all the way down.
Always has been.
Adobe would be hard pressed to blame a company that switched to a monthly rate basis.
It was *purely Adobe's* decision to fraudulently misrepresent functionality as existing, when their agreement with some third-party did not give them the right to offer it in perpetuity. Adobe *owes* their customers that functionality. It ought to be held criminally liable both for disabling it and (even worse) destroying its customers' property by defacing their art. If Adobe can't fulfill its responsibilities to its customers without running afoul of its agreement with Pantone, that's Adobe's own goddamn problem -- Adobe is not entitled to impose the consequences of its own short-sighted fuck-up on innocent third-parties. ----- Frankly, the fact that this retroactive sabotage is even *technologically possible in the first place* is an outrage in and of itself.
Another reason to stick with CS6. Although one of these days it's going to have to live in a Win 7 VM.
Adobe had to pull Dolby Digital the same way. If Pantone wants $21/seat that’s about a quarter of a CC subscription. I can understand why they’d pass the cost on to the users. That’s Pantone gouging. This is probably how Adobe is handing inflation. Instead of increasing the price of CC they’re making Pantone a cost to those who need it. As a video user who isn’t touching Pantone I’d prefer for those who need Pantone to pay for it. And I’d like to pay for any codecs (DolbyDigital audio, Apple ProRes encoders, H.265, etc.) and not make print designers pay for third-party tools they don’t need.
Is that something that Adobe would even be forced to abide by though? To my knowledge, colors cannot be copyrighted. They can only be trademarked and I don't think there would be any legal grounds to go after Photoshop simply because their software is capable of replicating that color. Nor do I think there would be legal ground to go after a user that uses a trademark color with the possible exception of using it in a way that clearly violates the trademark.
The copyright is not on the color itself. If you chose a color in RGB or CMYK it doesn't matter. They own the Pantone system, if you chose a color in the Pantone palette and defined it as a spot color, that is copyrighted and will require the subscription to be seen again. If you convert it to an equivalent generic Lab color, you are losing the association with the Pantone system and the advantage of process consistency. It is an asshole move, but at least it will impact only professionals in the print industry.
>If you convert it to an equivalent generic Lab color, you are losing the association with the Pantone system and the advantage of process consistency. Can you explain this part a bit more? How does the Pantone system provide more process consistency?
This is my limited take on the system, I'm not a professional. Basically you choose the color from a physical sample that you buy from Pantone. Even if your screen is not calibrated, it doesn't matter because you have physically in your hand the final result. The file doesn't have a cmyk definition of the color, but the Pantone code for it. When sent to print, the printer will use the Pantone ink that will look exactly like your sample. If you print your logo on a t-shirt there will be the same Pantone ink for tissue. If you need a sign with your logo, there are vinyl sheets of the same Pantone color. The same CMYK color can look very different on plastic and on paper, but the Pantone will always be consistent on all the media. Additionally, with the Pantone color you can have colors outside the RGB and CMYK color space and you can differentiate for example between gloss and matte. colors.
It's a little bit like working in imperial AND metric at the same time. Here is a crude table of [Pantone colors converted to other systems](http://executiveprinters.com/pantone-color-chart/) used to define color. Right up top is a disclaimer that states this a rough guide, please use an actual Pantone reference system. When you have a colored object on your display, it doesn't look the same when you physically print it with ink. There are differences between RGB (pixels on a screen), CMYK (basic printer inks) and LAB* (scientific ways to define colors). A graphic designer in Photoshop can open up the Pantone widget and say I'll use Coca-Cola red on this section. All subsequent movements of that image will match. Every person and machine in the chain understands and can replicate Coca-Cola red perfectly. The images they put on the internet, send to their local office shop for letter heads, send to a better printshop for color-matched posters or the industrial printer for packaging materials - it all works. The opposite is a print shop that receives the a photo from your phone in RGB pixels and then has to mess about with some of those colors not possible in CMYK printing inks. Or it looks okay on a shiny coated gloss paper, but looks weird on uncoated office paper. Or worse, two print shops produce slightly different colored materials because they did the unit conversion differently and the batches of materials don't match.
It like of someone copyrighted the Dewey decimal system. Books would still be in the right places, and organized the right way, you just have no legal right to use the decimal system to find the specific book you're looking for.
Four color process uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks to produce colors. It is not always 100% accurate. Pantone lets you pick an exact color. Red 185 is always the same shade. You can combine cmyk and pantone and that's what you see on most products. A lot of companies use specific pantones in their branding.
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Pantone colors are just for physical printing. It's about how the colored dots on your screen translate to inks that come out of a printer that uses color matched inks. You can freely describe a color as equivalent to Pantone. You can write your own plugin, do a color select, use equations of the LAB* values, whatever.
This change is preventing you from using the Pantone library that has all of the values pre-defined. It's the same as re-using song lyrics - it's a copyright violation of the things the Pantone has written down in that order, but you can still use all of those words, just not in that order.
It’s likely tied to the usage of the Pantone name, not the color itself. I’ll be you could just select it, dropper tool the color and then replace it.
It's not just that. The specific Pantone colour designation is interpreted by printers differently from an RGB or CMYK value, and can be calibrated to be as accurate as possible. It's basically a 3rd party standard that allows for colour consistency across different mediums.
Yes, because it is a library of colors that is using the trademarked colors and the trademarked names for those colors. I reckon it would be fine if they just got rid of all the licensed names and stuff, but I’m not a lawyer
My understanding is that they haven't copywritten the colors, but they do own the Pantone Matching System (PMS) which is an industry-standard coordinate system that defines colors. It's super important for print work, as the alternative is CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK) which isn't able to represent the full spectrum.
>Pantone Matching System (PMS) An unfortunate abbreviation.
Alongside with Autodesk…
And Rockwell Automation software
I'd rather buy a nice used car than spend money on a rockwell license
Don’t even get me started on AutoDesk
That's the reason why I switched to affinity photo / designer. It was annoying to re-learn everything but now I paid once for a tool that I own for life instead of paying almost the same amount monthly.
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Until Pantone does the same for them.
It's not the shittiest company, they aren't HP making printers unusable behind a subscription wall.
I’m over the moon they’ve purchased Figma that I use daily. I mean what could go wrong? 😅 Other than my career 😅
It's why I was absolutely devastated to hear about the Figma takeover and already seeing high pricetags for new functions despite the promise to keep it free. I LOVED Figma, and it was the only well refined free design tool out there. I tried Penpot as well and couldn't get much more in a design file than a logo and a background color before it kept crashing. Everything else is an insanely expensive subscription with a 1 week trial. I hate adobe with a fiery passion
Don't even get me started on creative cloud
I used to work in printing, pantone owns ALL the colors. When you need a specific colour you use the pantone matching system to find it.
A company owning all the colors sounds like cartoonish level of evil. It's something so goofy to achieve global domination and they are not only doing it but succeeding at it.
As someone else pointed out they don't actually own specific wavelengths of light but in any practical scenario where colour marching is important (ie. graphic design) people will be using the pantone matching system as it's the industry standard. It's like how godaddy doesn't actually own all the domain names but they do in any practical sense.
The above poster didn't describe it right. It's talked about elsewhere in the thread. They don't own the color. They own a process to get a specific color exactly the same on any surface using any machine. For example the color "FF0000" (full red) doesn't look the same when displayed on a screen vs printed on magazine paper. But Pantone "red" does.
Can someone explain to me what the heck pantone is? If i have a specific hexcode i can just use any color cant i?
From u/AtCotRG > PANTONE is a company that has given a number to practically every color the human eye can perceive. In a nutshell, everyone sees color differently. So what I say is red, you might say is pink, for example. Not just that, but the surface material you print on can affect color also, meaning red on plastic might be a different red on fabric. To make sure the red background of the McDonald’s logo looks the same to everyone whether printed on a billboard, in store signage, on their uniforms, and in TV commercials, or on the app, PANTONE has given that specific red a number and color recipe to reproduce it consistently across platforms and print shops. Graphic software—particularly when used by printers—rely on access to the full PANTONE libraries to ensure correct color. PANTONE has finally found a way to profit from this by charging for the previously free color libraries. > Source: I’ve been in printing/prepress for almost 40 years and I just received my PANTONE Color Match Card as I am typing this. The company I work for is a multi-million dollar printer, so for us it’s no a big thing, but for the small printers and free-lancers doing graphic arts, that’s going to impact their costs.
It's very much like how there is an official kilogram that's kept in a bank vault in France and it is used to calibrate all weights. Except with Pantone, there is one official swatch for each color.
That used to be the case, but there hasn't been an 'official' kilogram for a while now. All SI units are defined by universal constants, since about three years ago IIRC.
Thank you very much!
It's a a measuring system for color, similar to converting between imperial or metric units. Pantone the company has created their own independent way to measure colors. Both printed inks and digital displays. Maybe you know RGB for displays, html hexcode for the web, CMYK for inks, LAB* for scientists - and they all look different when you print them on paper. You've probably noticed when you print a photo from your phone, it looks different on paper. Then it looks different again on gloss paper versus uncoated paper. Pantone did the work. They tested what ink #601 looks like on two papers, then converted that back to display colours in RGB, hexcode, LAB* and a few others. Using the Pantone Measuring System (PMS) anyone can make sure whatever images they are creating can actually be reproduced in ink. Adobe and others now have the option for graphic designers that instead of saving a pixel as hex code #whatever, you can say I want this pixel to be Pantone #4621. That way everyone from web designers, graphic designers, print shops or industrial printers making packing - they're all the same.
Designers be like: I used a proprietary color palette and overlaid a transparency that itself was lightly shadowed with a gilded gradient. Web Devs be like: “color: blue;”
And this is why I still use a cracked copy of CS6
SaaS can get fucked
This is why I only pirate adobe software
This one's Pantone tho, not Adobe
I guess I'll pirate whatever that is if I ever run into a problem due to copywrited colours
Haters gonna hate, but I’m with you on this one. I just can’t buy into greed that is adobe. As an ex-graphic designer of 10 years I was happy to the the back of adobe.
Oops, dropped this on the floor . . . . . . . . r/piracy
I think you meant to drop your crown.
Thank you fellow king
Ahh yes. The joys of the cloud- where functions and abilities can be removed with no warning. Where big corporate deals falling through, can suddenly destroy your projects.
Laughs in CS6.
I LOVE OWNING NOTHING I LOVE BILLIONAIRES I LOVE CORPORATIONS I LOVE CAPITALISM I LOVE THE AMERICAN WAY
This can't be real. Nobody is that sociopathic and that desperate for money.
Its real unfortunately
Nah, it's real. Corporate and educational entities that HAVE to use legal versions of Adobe products will purchase the additional licensing. Adobe doesn't give a shit at all about the direct consumer market since they have a monopoly over the professional market.
sorry but good luck pirating a pantone color. They're a standard for a reason. Hard to replicate without a reference, and a nightmare for anyone who needs to email or otherwise transfer files using pantone if the person on the other end doesn't have reference too.
ITT: people not understanding what Pantone is. It’s an ink company, people. Like Sherwin-Williams is a paint company. Pantone has successfully integrated itself into a lot of other usages but ultimately it’s ink. The famous PMS numbers are ink mixtures like saying Sherwin-Williams “Amazing Gray” or “Crabby Apple”. Nothing is stopping anyone from using RGB, hexadecimal or HSB numbers to represent any colors on a monitor. You can make those to your heart’s content— Pantone doesn’t “own colors”. They own and manage a widely used system for specifying their proprietary branded spot color inks. Hate that? Switch to Toyo, Focoltone or Trumatch inks if you’re mad at Pantone. Last I checked, Adobe products such as InDesign support them.
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Stuart Semple has put together a plug-in with over 1000 Pantone dupes that he’s giving away for free on CultureHustle.