Can someone smarter than me explain how this Pantone color thing works? Does Pantone have a patent on specific RGB hex values? What stops me from using them in MS Paint or in HTML code or something?
Basically, when you send something off to get printed or produced, if you use Pantone colors, the print company will use the corresponding Pantone ink, so you know exactly what color you'll get.
If you don't use the Pantone colors, you may get something that's a bit different than what you wanted because the RGB color doesn't necessarily map perfectly to a CMYK color combination.
What's stupid is that Pantone colors are still represented on a computer screen as RGB colors. So everyone could just agree to say "ok, yeah, use the Pantone ink that corresponds to this computer pixel color." But the mapping of pixel color to corresponding Pantone ink color is one of the stupid things Pantone has IP protection for.
In other words, I'm not allowed to specify "use Pantone red here and Pantone blue here" without using the protected Pantone standards that the companies and machines are built around.
So it's just standard RGB values with a proprietary tag added on. Which makes the whole "replace all Pantones with black" thing even more needlessly assholish. They could have just replaced them with an equivalent standard color instead and barely anyone would have noticed, but it looks like they shot themselves in the foot and pissed a lot of people off.
Essentially, yes. Basically, Pantone's real product is ink / paint / a process for inking/painting. But they've also protected the process for specifying what colors of ink you want to use, because you can do that in this godforsaken hellworld.
Photoshop lets you put Pantone colors in, where instead of having an RGB value, the pixel will actually have a tag saying this is "Pantone Old Cabbage Green #03," which Photoshop displays as some specific RGB value. But if you send it to a printer using the Pantone system instead of looking at that RGB value, they'll look up the specific set of inks they're supposed to use for Pantone Old Cabbage Green #03 and use them.
Because this deals with physical printing of colors, many of which can't even be displayed on a computer screen to begin with, this is completely useless without a physical booklet of the colors. Pantone sells these for like $1000 a pop, and they have to be replaced yearly because the ink yellows with age. So anyone who actually needs this is already paying Pantone a fat stack of money.
(That said, it's entirely possible that this is Adobe being greedy bastards, not Pantone. Or both! It's capitalism after all.)
It's really Adobe's fault for including a "convert to Pantone" button in the first place, the entire concept makes no sense and a lot of people must have clicked on it because the tooltip promises "print-safe color" thinking it must be better or something like that.
Maybe this is just marketing, but colors printed on different materials may look slightly different. So their system is promising to calibrate colors between digital and physical mediums. If true, I still wonder who would really need that. (also I don't think you can even use Pantone for a photo, it would need to be digital creations)
Okay, that makes sense. I've had printers get colors in my photos completely wrong, but printers tend to suck anyway. Especially home ones.
I'm guessing anyone who would need such accurate color matching would be in some professional printing industry. But still, having to pay a subscription for the privilege is rather cucky.
Yeah I think actually when I learned about Pantone colors in my graphic design classes and how their little racket works, that may have been when I decided that the whole industry is a scam lol
The simplest way to describe is the Pantone System is a color recipe book paired with a swatch system so when printers, designers, etc make things, they get the exact results they’re looking for. Screens and paper dont use the same method of reproducing colors, so getting matches is difficult. So they use color reference numbers they test with the swatches to get consistent results.
It’s not really something the average consumer needs tbh.
Can someone smarter than me explain how this Pantone color thing works? Does Pantone have a patent on specific RGB hex values? What stops me from using them in MS Paint or in HTML code or something?
(Edit: Pantone, not Adobe.)
Basically, when you send something off to get printed or produced, if you use Pantone colors, the print company will use the corresponding Pantone ink, so you know exactly what color you'll get.
If you don't use the Pantone colors, you may get something that's a bit different than what you wanted because the RGB color doesn't necessarily map perfectly to a CMYK color combination.
What's stupid is that Pantone colors are still represented on a computer screen as RGB colors. So everyone could just agree to say "ok, yeah, use the Pantone ink that corresponds to this computer pixel color." But the mapping of pixel color to corresponding Pantone ink color is one of the stupid things Pantone has IP protection for.
In other words, I'm not allowed to specify "use Pantone red here and Pantone blue here" without using the protected Pantone standards that the companies and machines are built around.
So it's just standard RGB values with a proprietary tag added on. Which makes the whole "replace all Pantones with black" thing even more needlessly assholish. They could have just replaced them with an equivalent standard color instead and barely anyone would have noticed, but it looks like they shot themselves in the foot and pissed a lot of people off.
Essentially, yes. Basically, Pantone's real product is ink / paint / a process for inking/painting. But they've also protected the process for specifying what colors of ink you want to use, because you can do that in this godforsaken hellworld.
Photoshop lets you put Pantone colors in, where instead of having an RGB value, the pixel will actually have a tag saying this is "Pantone Old Cabbage Green #03," which Photoshop displays as some specific RGB value. But if you send it to a printer using the Pantone system instead of looking at that RGB value, they'll look up the specific set of inks they're supposed to use for Pantone Old Cabbage Green #03 and use them.
Because this deals with physical printing of colors, many of which can't even be displayed on a computer screen to begin with, this is completely useless without a physical booklet of the colors. Pantone sells these for like $1000 a pop, and they have to be replaced yearly because the ink yellows with age. So anyone who actually needs this is already paying Pantone a fat stack of money.
(That said, it's entirely possible that this is Adobe being greedy bastards, not Pantone. Or both! It's capitalism after all.)
It's really Adobe's fault for including a "convert to Pantone" button in the first place, the entire concept makes no sense and a lot of people must have clicked on it because the tooltip promises "print-safe color" thinking it must be better or something like that.
Maybe this is just marketing, but colors printed on different materials may look slightly different. So their system is promising to calibrate colors between digital and physical mediums. If true, I still wonder who would really need that. (also I don't think you can even use Pantone for a photo, it would need to be digital creations)
Okay, that makes sense. I've had printers get colors in my photos completely wrong, but printers tend to suck anyway. Especially home ones.
I'm guessing anyone who would need such accurate color matching would be in some professional printing industry. But still, having to pay a subscription for the privilege is rather cucky.
Yeah I think actually when I learned about Pantone colors in my graphic design classes and how their little racket works, that may have been when I decided that the whole industry is a scam lol
pantonepticon :kelly:
The simplest way to describe is the Pantone System is a color recipe book paired with a swatch system so when printers, designers, etc make things, they get the exact results they’re looking for. Screens and paper dont use the same method of reproducing colors, so getting matches is difficult. So they use color reference numbers they test with the swatches to get consistent results.
It’s not really something the average consumer needs tbh.