Pantone is moving their color matching behind a paywall, adobe remove pantone, where affinity stands?

[nitro912gr]

So I was watching some communities in reddit lately and this came up

 

It is not a big deal for me because I haven't used pantone like, never in my work flow, but I know a lot of people who need consistency in printing care a ton about pantone colors, even the simulated ones in our programs of work.

So what affinity will do with the pantones?

[Old Bruce]

59 minutes ago, nitro912gr said:

... because I haven't used pantone like, never in my work flow,

So what affinity will do with the pantones?

I too have had the luxury of never having had to use Pantone. Myself I think any organization that has Annual Collections of New [expletive deleted] Colours should not be trusted. The term Scam springs to mind. I have met printers who utterly loathe Pantone, they view their inks as favourably as taxes.

What Affinity will do is .... I am not entirely sure how Affinity and Pantone deal with each other. Is it a one time licence fee for each copy of Designer, Photo and Publisher as they are sold? Is that post suggesting that it will now be an annual licence fee for each application they sell going forward? Is this something completely different?

All I know is that I am not going to be bothered if the Pantone Palettes are removed, not just from Affinity products but from the whole world.

[lacerto]

It is not clear from this announcement what this actually means. It could be that in the future the Pantone libraries need to be accessed (and generated and accordingly forced to stay up-to-date) via PANTONE Connect plug-in, the basic version of which is free when using Adobe CC, and which is probably going to stay free, but it is unclear whether this will include free access to color books (I do not think that it currently does, but this may change as forcing designers to access colors one at a time without a subscription is not going to make use of PANTONE libraries and color definitions, not to mention actual inks, popular). The premium containing all PANTONE libraries plus tools would have a monthly or yearly subscription fee (the current yearly renewal fee is about USD 60).

There will of course be plenty of workarounds, and access to .acb color books (whether legacy or newly generated) will probably stay, even if the actual color libraries would no longer be distributed.

[lacerto]

Yes, but the actual implications are not clear. As the short bulletin states, Adobe is examining ways to make the change such that the impact is not as abrupt as it first seems. PMS is mostly used as a method to deliver an exact color code (nowadays) actually in Lab, and color-profile or mode independent definitions can continue to be delivered without PANTONE reference. While colors are given in PANTONE they very seldom actually get printed in special inks.

EDIT: The individual PANTONE to Lab, or e.g.  to sRGB based conversions are free with PANTONE Connect, and are going to stay free, so simply just for this usage, it is irrelevant whether .acb libraries are installed on the computer or not. Personally I see this as a more or less desperate act; I do not think it has anything to do with improved color accuracy (as claimed), but this is not going to change our workflows an inch. We have used actual PANTONE inks in the past every now and then, even regularly at the time CMYK was not a self-evident choice and use of special inks saved printing costs, but quite seldom recently. Whether there is any future need for actual spot inks, this "removal" is not going to be crucial and anything that requires designers to go premium and pay in order to be able to specify a spot color. It just might make things a bit more inconvenient  

[User_783649]

5 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

The idea of precise colour matching is nice, but in reality it only exists in ideal conditions. If I have a book printed with specific Pantone colours, and I read that book on the Tube with its fluorescent light it will not look the same if I had read it in daylight or in a cafe with different lighting.

That's why they also sell you special lightning indicator stickers! So you can always check if your viewing conditions are actually meeting the D50 or D65 standards.

https://www.pantone.com/lighting-indicator-stickers-d50

After all, this is business company and their only goal is profit. They want more and more people being locked in their proprietary universe with their own catalogues and color codes. The universe where they can charge people for anything. Just like every other company is trying to do these days. Nothing that might surprise us, I think.

[User_783649]

3 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

As the short bulletin states, Adobe is examining ways to make the change

I believe that they just not agreed internally on a final price yet betwen Pantone and Adobe. In the end, it is always a question “how much do you want for this?”.

I think dropping Pantone support completely will be a serious loss for Adobe as many users actually rely on these catalogues in their professional workflows.

[Old Bruce]

From the article mentioned by @Alex M,

Edit: From the article mentioned by @LondonSquirrel 

Industry reaction:

Simon Eccles, Printweek contributor and technical expert

“I’ve been using Adobe products since Illustrator 88,... more blather...

“Our very wonderful all-British Serif Software (subject of an early Best of British feature) still has Pantone libraries in its Affinity range, which compete with Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.”

[User_783649]

@Old Bruce I believe that link was actually provided by @LondonSquirrel

Really interesting article, by the way. And also comments.

Btw, I found the business license Pantone is offering to companies in order to be able to use their names, palettes and all other stuff:

https://www.pantone.com/license/software-and-web

Serif is listed here. So, probably Pantone will remain available in Affnity suite. Well, at least, untill Pantone decides to change their terms of use and put even more restrictions on this.

[Old Bruce]

Thanks for pointing out my mistake. I will now endeavour to correct it.

[User_783649]

I like the quote from Pantone's director of brand management from that article:

"Unfortunately, the current implementation of the Pantone library within Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps are outdated with many missing colors as well as inaccurate information. In order to provide the best user experience for our users, the companies together have decided to remove the outdated libraries and continue to collaborate on a better in-app experience."

I’m wondering myself: are Pantone libraries are being updated so frequently that it became a real problem? How often they’re updated? Once a year? Twice?

Or maybe that’s not a real problem. And “in order to provide the best user experience for our users” you just decided to make it a paid service.

Seems like more and more companies want a totally proprietary, subscription-based and cloud-only "future as a service" for us. Where we’ll have absolutely zero control over anything.

[Old Bruce]

4 minutes ago, Alex M said:

... are Pantone libraries are being updated so frequently that it became a real problem? How often they’re updated? Once a year? Twice?

Try quarterly at least, Fall colours will soon be out and Winter colours in.

Pantone is a Scam in my opinion. 

[kenmcd]

Wow. I feel sorry for poor Adobe.
Having to deal with some intractable, heartless, quasi-monopoly which affects their daily business ... that has got to be frustrating.
🤣

[lacerto]

2 hours ago, LibreTraining said:

Wow. I feel sorry for poor Adobe.

I do not think that this is going to hit Adobe, at all. Back in year zero, not having color management, even near PMS color gamut capable monitors, ISO printing standards, etc.,  graphic designers used to have about ten or so printed color sample books of PMS swatches along with their CMYK (coated and uncoated) approximations at hand to get at least some kind of a trusted reference and guidance values, but all this has changed long ago -- we now just use the Lab values and convert them to whatever accurate value translated by the profile not being able to care less about "official" PANTONE conversion values, which are always inaccurate. To me this sounds like PANTONE (not really needed at all, unless you really have to print in special inks) trying to get free money from Adobe for each CC user, and Adobe refusing. I won't give either of them free money, but Adobe at least is not totally obsolete.

[Old Bruce]

34 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

... I won't give either of them free money,...

I do not know for certain but I bet that very very little of your money was free. I'll wager you had to work for it. So yes, don't be giving it out without getting something of value for it.

[v_kyr]

Quote

Does Pantone have any competitors?

1 Answer -

    Colin Jensen, worked at Printing

 

Print is generally in Pantone. Paint is often in Pantone; Web less so. Everyone kinda uses them, but everyone needs to convert them into something else, including in Print, where Pantone is often used as much for their ink-mixture-recipes as for the colors themselves. That's maybe a core perspective to know: that some exist for matching, some exist for mixing, all are used for both.

There are tons of other brands, but in your average print shop in America you'll never see them.

• RGB - screen only
• CMYK - print only
• HEX - web design, includes list of "safe colors" renderable by simpler computers
• RAL colour standard

• (for Europe, includes RAL Classic, RAL Design, RAL Effect)
• ANPA (Newspaper Association of America
• colors)
• Colour Index International
• NCS / Natural Color System
• - Scandinavian Colour Institute
• DIC -
• big in Japan
• Tokyo Ink - big in Japan
• HKS -
• big in Europe
• ISCC–NBS system
• - focuses on color names, basically like getting a box of 1000 crayons, so no numbers or codes, just "very light purplish pink."
• Crayola & RoseArt color names
• Munsell color system
• - that thing that looks like a play button with a circle around it that you sometimes see when picking a color online (called MagicPicker in recent Photoshops
• )... it's hue, value, lightness based
• Ostwald color system
• British Standards 4800/5252, 381C, 2660, 5252 - British
• ASTM F934 - only for chain link fence colors!
• DIN 6164 - UK
• Australian Standard
• Sherman Williams - common paint system in the US
• Farrow and Ball - UK paint brand
• Little Greene - UK paint
• Federal Standard 595
• - the US government's gotta' be redundant, right? I mean, what if Pantone were a spy? Seriously, this is how you find the official flag colors, or the official camouflage colors for various conflicts, etc.
• Infinite more since basically every brand in all fields has their own system, because they're trying to pay Pantone less money by using them less.

 

[SKT7]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/adobe-e2-80-99s-controversial-color-scheme-hits-creatives-hard/ar-AA13utIx

Looks like it's happening. 

Does anyone know it what would happen to Pantone color palettes in Affinity programs?

[thomaso]

I don't know if there are designers painting with PANTONE swatches … in my experience spot colour palettes are mainly used for single design elements of clients respectively of their corporate design items like logos or maybe background colours.

So, even if I don't have a PANTONE palette available in my layout application I still can create a spot colour swatch, make sure to name it correctly in both instances and define its CMYK more or less exactly (or just estimated in case no digital or printed reference exists). Since from a spot colour not my custom CMYK values get printed but the printer's rip rather reads the named PANTONE information I can actually / theoretically use any CMYK definition for such a PANTONE spot colour in my layout file and print PDF.

[lacerto]

The current situation within Adobe apps is that support for all other PANTONE color books except the following five has been dropped:

PANTONE+ CMYK Coated.acb
PANTONE+ CMYK Uncoated.acb
PANTONE+ Metallic Coated.acb
PANTONE+ Solid Coated.acb
PANTONE+ Solid Uncoated.acb

The last two will be dropped in 2023, so in practice after that, only metallic PANTONE spot colors will be supported (CMYK libraries do not include spot colors). Officially defining PANTONE spot colors (other than metallic ones) for Adobe apps must thereafter be done with PANTONE Connect, which no longer appears even as a legacy app within Photoshop, and which works poorly, and tries to enforce its users to get the subscription-based full version of the app on every corner of the UI. Most long-time users have probably saved the Adobe .acb libraries which continue to be usable within Adobe apps (and also in context of some other apps) even after they no longer will be supplied with new version installations. .acb libraries can also be converted in one go to swatch libraries (including Lab based) in some Adobe apps, and I suppose support for this feature will not be removed. Other channels, some no doubt dodgy, will probably continue to exist that deliver these libraries (or tables stating at least the sRGB display values).

ISO based color management has made use of PANTONE kinds of color libraries mostly obsolete. As mentioned, user-based definition of spot colors continues to be supported in most graphic design apps. It is mostly pretty trivial whether the visual appearance of spot colors is defined in terms of specific RGB or CMYK profile, or profile-neutrally (and in wider gamut) in Lab, as long as the colors separate correctly (and are recognized correctly). I assume that PANTONE will continue to give sRGB based definitions free of charge (but only using their at the moment very clumsy and user-unfriendly app so e.g. free web based conversion support has ceased) -- this is what Affinity apps currently have and which they are likely to be able to continue having also in the future.