Different Pantone-Definitions

[kai2]

Hi,

the Pantone color definitions (CMYK) differ from the definitions in Affinity-Publisher.

Is this a bug or is this intentional?

Regards 

Kai-Uwe

[mac_heibu]

If you use Pantone colours as spot colour, it is completely irrelevant, how it displays on screen. The spot colour prints as an (5th, 6th, 7th, …) individual colour plate and this plate is printed with an individual (not composed) colour.

If you print it as a separated colour, this colour may vary, because of the colour profile, which is assigned to the document. Different profiles — different colour values.

[kai2]

I use e.g. Pantone Solid Coated 116c in a CMYK-document with ISO Solid Coated profile. The Pantone definition (coated) is 0/14/100/0. The definition in the colour-panel (coated) in APub ist 0/20/93/0. Same profiles - different definitions?

https://store.pantone.com/de/de/colorfinder/index/acfproduct/code/116+C 

 

[thomaso]

What do you mean with "Same profiles - "?
You mentioned only one ("ISO Solid Coated") which actually is no profile name. You might mean any with "ISO coated ..." in its name?

Pantone and CMYK do exist as real physical colors (inks). If they get mixed to compare their look and read their % of physical material (–> values) there is no profile needed. It can be done in real live, in your kitchen so to say, at 'natural' light, without monitor. (probably there is a colorimeter involved, too, to proof the comparisons). But profiles are a must have in the conversion process of real color/ink –> virtual color on screen –> printing machine –> real color/ink on real paper color.

You can get an idea how profiles can change values in the Colorsync app on your mac:

[kai2]

i will try to explain the problem again: on the website of pantone, for example, pantone 116 coated is defined like this (CMYK): 0/14/100/0 (https://www.pantone.com/color-finder/116-C)

The colour-panel of APub defines the same colour differnet - independent of colour profile: 0/20/93/0. Why?

[thomaso]

10 hours ago, kai2 said:

independent of colour profile: 0/20/93/0.

No in here. Depending on your document profile it also result as 0/18/100/ 0 for instance.

Yesterday I tried to explain why two colors of same physical material (= ink) don't need profiles to be the same whereas virtual colors (= pixels on screen) do. Now I try to explain why you possibly might not understand it:

1) One reason to make you think that CMYK values would be independent of a color profile could be that the values in the Color panel unfortunately do not change simultaneously with a change of your document color profile. You need to switch back and forward to get it updated.

2) Another reason might be that different profiles vary differently for specific colors, so possibly/theoretically two profiles can give identical CMYK values for Pantone 116 but different values for other Pantone colors.

3) A third reason might be related to the fact that the CMYK values in the color panel ignore decimals, so two values of 20.51% and 21,49% are the same, which can result in a set of 4 channels in a total difference of 4%. Even if 4% sound irrelevant to your ears and eyes it might matter on the technically side, as you can see in the number of decimals used in the Colorsync app in the screenshot above.

4) Last but not least also a reason not to understand whats going on is the fact that we, homo sapiens, only use "models" to describe and talk about colors, for instance using 3-dimensional space models to illustrate or using words like "tint", "saturation" etc, which all are models to express how we see this small area of electromagnetic waves we call "visible" and "color".

5) Therefore finally a software like color management does support our eyes by manipulating values to give the visual impression of consistency of a specific look of one color.

 

About 30 years ago – DTP still was a youngster and Microsoft and Apple named colors with "grasgreen", "lightblue" or "peach" – it was absolutely impossible for a designer to get colors printed in a print shop in the same look as on the designers monitor. Instead the involved service provider had demanded from the designer to calibrate the designers monitor to get it fit to the service providers screen, which probably was calibrated in relation to the service providers printer software which itself was set according to the printing hardware. So it came out that time that everybody towards everybody assumed a bug.

[kai2]

Many thanks for your detailed explanation.
I'll test it out:-)

[mac_heibu]

I posted this question in the swiss forum „HilfDirSelbst“, one of the wordwide most knowledgeable forums concerning print, prepress and publishing. For German speaking users, here is the thread: HDS. The answers are quite enlightening …

A similar thread can be found in the official InDesign forum: Pantone ID Forum