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2023 Pantone Colors


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Probably never.

I think they license they have from Pantone only covers the older color sets, and Pantone has changed their licensing for the newer sets in a way that discourages applications adding them. Look what Photoshop is doing, for example. They are completely removing their built-in Pantone palettes (if I understand the discussions correctly) and requiring users to directly license them from Pantone.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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They need to get the PANTONES in there . Also it would be great if they added paint swatches.  Use them in the film industry all the time in layout signage and set mockups.

Or the ability to import the ASF files that Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams and so on give for free on their sites. They don't import into Designer at the moment. Or at least not correctly.

Gary

 

Windows 11 Pro, Ryzen 9 7950x, 64GB DDR5 6000mhz, Nvidia 4080 OC 16gb, Dell 38inch curved monitor.

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The implications for CC subscribers are even worse than @walt.farrell mentions.

Imagine you are a CC subscriber, and in the past whether just a few months ago or 20 years, you created something in Photoshop using colours from certain Pantone swatches. Thanks to CC updates the rug is pulled from under your feet. Those colours that were included as part of your subscription are now no longer available. Add another $15 or thereabouts to your subscription to get them back.

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2 hours ago, thegary said:

They need to get the PANTONES in there .

At what cost? If Serif has to pay a hefty licensing fee to Pantones, I think they would have to pass that cost along to users by increasing the purchase price.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

At what cost? If Serif has to pay a hefty licensing fee to Pantones, I think they would have to pass that cost along to users by increasing the purchase price.

it can be an option or addon for those that need it. Not everyone does. So sell it a as a addon. Its a writeoff if its for work so who cares.

People are used to free , but if you use it for work i am sure they can do it for a reasonable cost.

Gary

Windows 11 Pro, Ryzen 9 7950x, 64GB DDR5 6000mhz, Nvidia 4080 OC 16gb, Dell 38inch curved monitor.

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4 hours ago, Jakub Trybowski said:

When are going to add the 2023 Pantone colors?

I don't think they hold a candle to the ones from 2014 let alone the absolute all time greats from 2008 + 2009.

Seriously, I would not be at all surprised if this Colour of the Year scam dies due to the licensing fees recently introduced. Not a Pantone fan here.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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42 minutes ago, thegary said:

it can be an option or addon for those that need it. Not everyone does. So sell it a as a addon. Its a writeoff if its for work so who cares.

So again, what do you think Serif would have to charge for this add-on, & how many users would buy it at that additional cost to make it worth their time & effort to add it?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

So again, what do you think Serif would have to charge for this add-on, & how many users would buy it at that additional cost to make it worth their time & effort to add it?

maybe they should offer it. I'm not their marketing dept. If it makes sense do it, if not don't.

I can imagine it would make sense for those that use the program for their work. Or specifically need PANTONES.  Thats why addons are good.

Gary

 

Windows 11 Pro, Ryzen 9 7950x, 64GB DDR5 6000mhz, Nvidia 4080 OC 16gb, Dell 38inch curved monitor.

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5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Probably never.

I think they license they have from Pantone only covers the older color sets, and Pantone has changed their licensing for the newer sets in a way that discourages applications adding them. Look what Photoshop is doing, for example. They are completely removing their built-in Pantone palettes (if I understand the discussions correctly) and requiring users to directly license them from Pantone.

Time for an alternative colour matching scheme to compete with Pantone. Open source would be best much as Ghostscript did for Postscript.

Everyone would benefit and Pantone would no longer have a monopoly on the colour matching environment. 

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1 hour ago, thegary said:

I can imagine it would make sense for those that use the program for their work. Or specifically need PANTONES.  Thats why addons are good.

I still would like to know how much you think users would be willing to pay for this add-on to get the newest Pantone colors, particularly if it had to be offered on a subscription basis because of Pantone's licensing requirements.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I still would like to know how much you think users would be willing to pay for this add-on to get the newest Pantone colors, particularly if it had to be offered on a subscription basis because of Pantone's licensing requirements.

I dont' do anything involving subscriptions. As i said above . No idea what it would cost. Don't know what i would pay. Don't know if its even worth Affinity's time.

If it happens I would evaluate then.

Gary

 

Windows 11 Pro, Ryzen 9 7950x, 64GB DDR5 6000mhz, Nvidia 4080 OC 16gb, Dell 38inch curved monitor.

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3 minutes ago, thegary said:

I dont' do anything involving subscriptions. As i said above.

But that's how Pantone licenses their newer colors now. You pay them a subscription fee, and they let you use a plugin that gives you access to the colors you want to use in your document.

Keep paying the fee, and your documents keep working.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
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4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But that's how Pantone licenses their newer colors now. You pay them a subscription fee, and they let you use a plugin that gives you access to the colors you want to use in your document.

Keep paying the fee, and your documents keep working.

@walt.farrell

I didn't realize that.  Same answer would have to see if it became available if i would or not. Depends on what my work requires.

Gary

 

Windows 11 Pro, Ryzen 9 7950x, 64GB DDR5 6000mhz, Nvidia 4080 OC 16gb, Dell 38inch curved monitor.

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11 minutes ago, thegary said:

I dont' do anything involving subscriptions.

Then like Walt said, you would not be interested in licensing these new Pantone colors.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1 hour ago, Michael S Harvey said:

Time for an alternative colour matching scheme to compete with Pantone. Open source would be best much as Ghostscript did for Postscript.

And you could still print the open source colors yourself! All you would need is something like Pantone reference cards to make them…

Paolo

 

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1 hour ago, Michael S Harvey said:

Time for an alternative colour matching scheme to compete with Pantone. Open source would be best much as Ghostscript did for Postscript.

Unlike an open-source software-only solution a spot colour matching scheme requires corresponding physical inks with consistency in international areas like continents to be useful at all. These products, their development and colour proofs (licensing) require a certain minimum consumption to be economically efficient and are therefore difficult to realise as open source.

Quote

The Pantone® Matching system (PMS) (...) contains special colors, which cannot be reached with the four-process inks. This system is based on the 14 basic shades called basic inks. These inks are international standard, being approved for J+S by PANTONE® regularly once a year.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Contrary to common belief, it does not cost anything to have digital swatch libraries for PANTONE colors. Just visit their site, create a free Basic account (there are of course no guarantees but the basic features seem to be permanently available for free), and you can create and save up to 10 named palettes each consisting of max 40 swatches from any of the 16 PANTONE libraries and over 15,000 colors (including e.g. 2023 colors and colors of the year and other fancy stuff) and download them as an sRGB image to be used for creating custom swatches in your favorite app. If you have Adobe account, you can additionally use free account with PANTONE Connect Plug-in, which has some extra uses and can automatically load palette images e.g. into Photoshop. 

pantoneconnect_web_free.thumb.jpg.83faad36cb85f55b6518735c3b5b4e13.jpg

By using the downloaded bitmap, it would then be easy to create permanent palette libraries, including spot color palettes. Below first 10 of the 2023 swatches have been used to create a spot color palette:

image.thumb.jpeg.c743d51ec1c2fd0f5fbb2cf2860e1ec7.jpeg

The color representations are limited to sRGB but that is not an issue for most uses, and does not prevent use of e.g. spot color swatches. Swatch names and sRGB information is all that is needed to create spot color swatches manually.

For some reason in version 2 of Publisher, I could not subsequently export an Affinity palette so that it could be imported as a document palette for any Affinity document (only Windows version tested). Version 1 apps do not show this problem.

There has been much ado about (mostly) nothing as regards changes in availability of PANTONE libraries but the actual impact seems to be insignificant to most users. Premium account allows limitless palettes and operations and useful tools (e.g. for conversion and lookup) and palette maintenance functions (which probably continue to be available for Adobe users since the available features are not PANTONE specific and also do not limit use of legacy libraries) would not be a significant cost to anyone needing these libraries professionally. Most Adobe users can continue to use their old libraries as if nothing had been changed, and will have free plugin-based access to new swatches should they need them.

General access to PANTONE swatch libraries has become more restricted and clumsier, but in color managed environment accurate color references are customarily given in profile or Lab context so significance of trademark color references has diminished. Those who really need custom inks would typically get printed references anyway.

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7 minutes ago, lacerto said:

If you have Adobe account, you can additionally use free account with PANTONE Connect Plug-in, which has some extra uses and can automatically load palettes e.g. in Photoshop.

Did you actually try that? I'm curious because as I interpret what the Pantone site says, you don't get PANTONE Connect unless you have a paid PANTONE subscription.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
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22 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Did you actually try that? I'm curious because as I interpret what the Pantone site says, you don't get PANTONE Connect unless you have a paid PANTONE subscription.

Yes, I have had a free account about forever as I have purchased a dozen or so printed libraries in the past, and also have X-Rite calibrator and free PANTONE Color Manager (now a legacy app). But this is irrelevant, any user can create a free account and get the benefits of the basic account mentioned above, and more specifically here [benefits of the premium account are truncated in the image but what is included in the free account is shown in full]:

image.png.f9ab3f036ed1d5d0952bdfa013e68c67.png

If you asked specifically about PANTONE Connect Plug-in for Adobe apps, yes, its basic usage (similarly as in context of web browser) is free of charge. No one would probably even purchase it as it is a legacy add-in, its UI is poor and full of sales clutter, and it has duly been rated at 1 star (as zero is not possible) on Adobe CC plug-in section.

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This is to shed some light to darkness... I share this to help present Adobe users to be able to deal with misinformation that is spread on the Internet, also on this forum.

Whenever spot swatches are used, they typically have a reference to the library color (so that their meaning is clear whenever separated for print). It is a simple matter to reassign colors to them (in case their original color representation is broken). The color representations do not need to be accurate but the following video clip shows how sRGB representations can easily be picked by using the PANTONE Connect Plugin also when using a free PANTONE account:

Missing non-spot colors would simply just be resolved to their standard composite colors.

The files containing library spot colors can still be placed and exported for production even without proper color representations (dependent on missing libraries), so they would be shown in grayscale e.g. in InDesign and Adobe Acrobat:

image.thumb.jpeg.a81ba057d239bc5ba33c57463fd5f2c0.jpeg

I hope this helps to get a bit firmer grasp on what the notorious PANTONE change means. As mentioned, most users probably just continue using legacy libraries (they were warned about the forthcoming change for about a year before it happened and should accordingly have realized to create backup copies). The legacy libraries will most probably be available from various other sources, as well, some of which no doubt a bit dodgy. But as shown, the missing representations can be retrieved in sRGB relatively easily, and without extra cost. The mapping might become easier once there is a proper PANTONE plug-in. Scripting tools could also be used to automate the task.

UPDATE: In addition to what is said above, it should be noted that all pre Nov 22 created Photoshop files with PANTONE colors will open non-disrupted in Photoshop post Nov 22 versions (so the disruption will only affect Photoshop files with most but not all PANTONE book colors used in Photoshop files created in post Nov 22 versions). So the situation demonstrated above on the video would not happen when opening a PSD file containing these colors in a file created in pre Nov 22 version of Photoshop [I confirmed this with one created in PS2002 and CS6], even when opened in a Photoshop version dated from Nov 22 or later that no longer ships with .acb libraries. Similarly all InDesign and Illustrator files containing swatches from PANTONE color books will open and are placeable as before, without disruption. In a nutshell this means that disruptive behavior has been reduced to the minimum.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/pantone-color-books-photoshop.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/pantone-color-books-illustrator.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/pantone-color-books-indesign.html

UPDATE: As of Feb 24 2023 PANTONE Connect plug-in seems to allow direct addition of any spot color as a Photoshop channel, using a free account, so one nuisance less. Direct creation of swatches however still requires a PANTONE subscription. 

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31 minutes ago, lacerto said:

The color representations do not need to be accurate

Since the physical ink matters more than the screen view and I have no idea or control of colour reliability on a clients monitor I would even consider to create a PANTONE colour swatch from scratch / myself. Especially if I need only a certain swatch and possibly have the printed swatches anyway. Optionally going the procedure to a spot swatch via a screenshot, scan or photo,  for instance:

1471650088_pantonescreenshot2.jpg.3588f84fd92d76b6dac75f721fe33aee.jpg–> 1366673209_pantone-swatchesfromimage.jpg.832675bb5fe936219ce44e04a18da6c5.jpg –>

992055285_pantone-swatchesfromimage2.jpg.c62fda0ac8623ebc441ca41dbdab8678.jpg –> 1435052751_pantone-swatchesfromimage3.jpg.289dadc0cc2b97abab445dafcb056a9c.jpg

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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On 1/19/2023 at 12:42 AM, thomaso said:

Since the physical ink matters more than the screen view and I have no idea or control of colour reliability on a clients monitor I would even consider to create a PANTONE colour swatch from scratch / myself.

Sometimes of course it is ideal to be able to simulate the printed inks (to the extent it can be done) and in those cases Lab representations (and a wide-gamut display) are the best choice (that is, if the app also can show them; I think that Affinity apps will always limit display of spot colors within sRGB, even if the document color space is a wider RGB gamut space; when working in CMYK color mode -- typically with still more desaturated colors -- this is quite restricting and also unrealistic). It is also valuable to be able to simulate the difference in typical client screens and wide-gamut print. But most often it does not much matter, and special "inks" like varnish of course need to be faked anyway. 

EDIT: To be exact, it is the document color space (within Affinity apps) that defines the gamut of the spot colors, so their gamut is not inherently limited to sRGB. But inbuilt PANTONE library colors are (in Affinity apps, but not e.g. within Adobe apps, where definitions are L*a*b based). But if custom spot colors were defined using a wider color gamut than sRGB, this color space would be used provided that the current document color mode covers the gamut.

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