How To Use Pantone Colors In Photoshop

Futurity changes to the Pantone Colour Libraries

Pantone color libraries currently preloaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, will be phased out starting August 31, 2022 (with the exception of PANTONE+ CMYK Coated, PANTONE+ CMYK Uncoated, PANTONE+ Metal Coated). Pantone is supporting their most upwardly-to-appointment colour libraries exclusively through the Pantone Connect plug-in available here. Adobe and Pantone accept been working together to back up your color needs and additional information and tutorials will be bachelor shortly.

Learn about the Pantone Plus colour libraries used in Illustrator.

Pantone Plus modernize the way Adobe applications use spot colors from color book manufacturers. Adobe Illustrator, along with InDesign and Photoshop, uses the Pantone Plus Series® of color books. Pantone Plus includes the PMS colors, replacing the earlier Pantone Matching System®.

Pantone Color Libraries in Adobe applications, such equally Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign, are available nether a business understanding between Pantone and Adobe. This understanding does not embrace all the Pantone color libraries, therefore, you might not find sure Pantone libraries in Illustrator and other Adobe applications.

In add-on, both these applications have independent update cycles, so recent updates to Pantone libraries may not be immediately available under Adobe applications.

Y'all can update the color libraries using the Pantone Plus Digital Libraries Installer. For more than details, see Pantone Color Manager.

Color swatches

Adobe Illustrator has three types of color swatches: procedure, global, and spot.

Procedure and global color swatches are related to the document colour mode. Irresolute the document color manner from CMYK to RGB converts the process or global colors. Changing the document color mode back again is a 2nd conversion, not a return to the original colour.

Unlike process and global color swatches, spot colour swatches preserve the definition and color modes (CMYK, RGB, LAB, Grayscale, HSB, or WebSafe RGB) in which they are created.

Color swatches can be created by either of these:

users
color volume manufacturers such equally Pantone

PANTONE+ color books

Color system manufacturers create standardized colors for communicating color information across apps and processes. These standardized colour libraries are chosen color books.

The Pantone Plus Serial® in Illustrator includes ten libraries:

PANTONE+ CMYK Coated
PANTONE+ CMYK Uncoated
PANTONE+ Color Bridge Coated
PANTONE+ Color Bridge Uncoated
PANTONE+ Metallic Coated
PANTONE+ Pastels & Neons Coated
PANTONE+ Pastels & Neons Uncoated
PANTONE+ Premium Metallics Coated
PANTONE+ Solid Coated
PANTONE+ Solid Uncoated

The filename extension of these colour books is .acb.

Legacy color books

Before CS2, spot colors from Pantone and other systems used CMYK values as the color definitions. CMYK values were whole numbers.

Pantone color books, introduced in CS2, apply Lab values as the color definitions. The equivalent CMYK values aren't e'er whole numbers.

The filename extension of these color books is .acbl.

Define spot colors using Lab values

In Adobe Illustrator, you lot add named color swatches, such every bit manufacturer-supplied spot colors, to the document swatches.

Spot colors in the Pantone Plus Series® use Lab values. There are no CMYK definitions for spot colors in the Pantone Plus Serial®. Therefore, to add Pantone Plus spot colors to your document swatches, define spot colors using Lab values.

To define spot colors using Lab values, choose Spot Colors from the Swatches panel (Window > Swatches), select Use Lab values specified by the book manufacturer, then click OK.

Selecting the Use Lab values specified by the book manufacturer option

Recommendations

With the Pantone Plus Series®, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop CS6 and CC all incorporate the colour libraries from Pantone, enabling seamless commutation of book colors from one app to the other. And because the spot colors employ Lab values, the visible results are much closer to the real inks bachelor. Using Lab values for spot colors also reduces the deviation of advent between the Normal and Overprint Preview viewing modes.

CMYK, as a color way, has a fairly limited gamut. Representing Pantone spot colors in CMYK values results in a wider difference of appearance betwixt printed output and digital artwork.

When workflows demand that Pantone colors utilize CMYK values, Adobe recommends that you use the Pantone Plus Series® global colors instead of spot colors. If yous must apply Pantone spot colors that utilise CMYK values, come across the post-obit workarounds.

Workaround 1: Supplant Pantone Plus with older Pantone color books

In Illustrator CS6 or CC:

From the binder Adobe Illustrator [CS6 or CC]/Presets/[language]/Swatches/Color Books/, remove all the libraries that have names starting with Pantone+.

From an older version of Illustrator (CS2-CS5), copy all the Pantone libraries with extension .acb and place into: Adobe Illustrator [CS6 or CC]/Presets/[language]/Swatches/Color Books.

Copy all Pantone libraries with extension .acbl and place into: Adobe Illustrator CS6/Presets/[linguistic communication]/Swatches/Color Books/Legacy.

Relaunch Illustrator, and open all the document profiles from:

Mac Os: [user]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator [CS6 or CC]/[linguistic communication]/New Document Profiles

-or-

Windows 7: [drive]/Users/[user]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator [CS6 or CC] Settings/[language]/[binary]/New Document Profiles

-or-

Windows XP: [drive]/Documents and Settings/[user]/Application Data/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator [CS6 or CC] Settings/[language]/New Document Profiles

For each profile, choose Spot Colors from the Swatches console (Window > Swatches), select Use CMYK values from the manufacturer's process books, then click OK.

Selecting the Use CMYK values from the manufacturer's process books option

Save and close all certificate profiles, so restart Illustrator again.

Workaround ii: Make older Pantone libraries available for missing colors

Use this workaround only if you see missing colors in legacy documents opened in Illustrator CS6 or CC. Information technology is not recommended to apply older Pantone libraries to add new colors to a document.

In Illustrator CS6 or CC:

From an older version of Illustrator (CS2–CS5), copy all Pantone libraries with extension .acb and place into this folder: Adobe Illustrator [CS6 or CC]/Presets/[language]/Swatches/Colour Books.

FAQs

No. In that location is no change in this process. To add a spot color to a document, open the color book and click the desired swatch.

In Illustrator CS5 and before versions, which included the older versions of the Pantone color books, nearly spot colors from Pantone had two definitions: Lab and CMYK. In add-on, the default setting in the Spot Color Options dialog box was CMYK. CMYK values took priority over Lab values. The spot color added to the document usually came with CMYK values.

If you need the same spot colors to be identical in CS5 (and earlier) and CS6/CC, have the following steps, run into Workaround 1: Supervene upon Pantone Plus with older Pantone color books.

This workaround makes the Pantone spot colour compatible across different versions of Illustrator. However, it could bear upon cross-product workflows with InDesign and Photoshop, if you lot are using the Pantone Plus Series® with these apps.

No. Files from earlier versions open up successfully. Spot color definitions are preserved along with their original definitions.

An exception: opening legacy files that contain linked PSDs or TIFF files that have spot channels from older Pantone colour books.

Importing PSDs and TIFF files with spot channels containing older Pantone colors

PSD and TIFF files that contain spot channels from color books retain a link to the color book. When yous identify-link such files in an Illustrator CS6 or CC document, the system searches for the color information for spot channels in the installed Pantone Plus color books. If an identically named colour is institute in whatever of the available spot color books, the organization fetches information technology and links to the file or opens the legacy file. (This procedure is also true for opening legacy ai/eps/pdf/indd files that contain links to such PSDs or TIFFs.) During this process, in that location can be a slight difference in how the color appears (compared to Illustrator CS5 or earlier). There are two possible reasons for the difference of appearance:

The Spot Color Options setting may accept been CMYK in the older Illustrator version, and Lab in CS6 or CC.
Pantone may accept changed the definition of the color in Pantone Plus.

If the colour used in spot channels isn't found, Illustrator displays a alarm and places the file with the spot color turning black. However, it retains the color every bit a spot color (Illustrator converts the color to a default black spot for the swatch values instead of coverting it to a process colour).

For workarounds, run across Workaround i: Supercede Pantone Plus with older Pantone color books and Workaround ii: Make older Pantone libraries bachelor for missing colors.