Comments on: Quick–what Pantone color is that?

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 21:40:08 +0000

I was shocked at how poor AI CS3’s ‘Convert Color’ (using the 1-color setting) was in converting a dark brown. It replaced it with a Pantone Black, no hint of brown at all. Photoshop came much closer, recommending 405 C.

By: varun

varun — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 07:00:37 +0000

Great Discussion. I’m a product developer for various computer products. Mostly plastics. The photoshop color guide is really very useful, but it is important to check whatever color that has been selected in color book. the color can look waay off.

By: Greg Mouning

Greg Mouning — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:46:02 +0000

Hi,

I found the following weblink helpful in converting RGB to the closest Pantone color:

http://www.netfront.fr/Services/rgb2pantone/

And the following weblink demostrates how to do this visually using both Illustrator and Photoshop:

http://www.dezignmusings.com/2008/09/it-often-happens-that-after-you-create.html

By: Jael

Jael — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:46:31 +0000

I love that you can use the eyedropper to bring a color from ID to PS, but I agree that we should use the Pantone color books to match color. For one you’re looking at a CMYK swatch in RGB and then converting it to PMS. Yikes! It is misleading to judge any color by matching it on screen. Customers and supervisors rarely get what they’re asking for when they start picking colors this way. If I had a dime for every what-you-see-is-not-what-you-get argument about the difference between colors on monitor and press, I could afford to lose or quit my job if, God forbid, some important person in charge reads this article and tells me that the press CAN print what they see on their monitor. LOL! However, I can see a benefit in using the eye-dropper to find a close proximity to the color then fine-tuning the color match with the Pantone swatches.

By: Rajesh

Rajesh — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 09:06:42 +0000

Hi,
I received a cd from customer. They have lots of stationries to print. In illustrator file the designer used two spot color. Its called “New color swatch and New color swatch 1″. Printer need pantone number. I apply the same way. They printed all stationaries. Unfortunately the customer rejected all stationaries. 7,482.63 USD loss.

By: Emma

Emma — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:49:27 +0000

I would use the Pantone swatch book anyday, how do you know your screen is perfectly calibrated?

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 12:54:22 +0000

Thanks to all of you. I just had this problem and checked out all solutions. The Photoshop trick is good as well as the javascript from wundes.com. Of course I used the swatch book to verify. By far the worst match is done by “Art Directors Toolkit”, it is allmost unusable.

By: Mordy Golding

Mordy Golding — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 08:03:42 +0000

Guess what? The new Color Guide feature in Illustrator CS3 can do this quite easily…

By: erique

erique — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 04:47:25 +0000

Yu could also take note of the CMYK break-up and then run John Wundes ‘CMYKtoPMS script in Illustrator (http://www.wundes.com/js4ai/displayFilesWTemplate.pl#CMYKtoPMS.js). I have found this to be more acurate than using Art Director’s Toolkit and with a visual swatch comparison as back-up an almost foolproof method.

By: woz

woz — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:29:00 +0000

That is correct (some apps use Lab, other Pantone’s libraries. These libraries become more and more optimised with each version). Of course it also depends on what CMYK you use (coated, uncoated).