Pantone Colour Manger

Has Pantone colour manager been discontinued and replaced with Pantone Connect. I recently updated my adobe programmes meaning I lost all pantone colour books. I went to update my colour books using colour manager but this doesnt seem to be an option anymore?

That is correct. Pantone has move to Pantone Connect.
And guess what?
For now it is free to use.
It will eventually become a subscription service.
And it remains to be seen what kind of support Adobe will give it, as right now, Adobe will not update to include the 400+ new colors added since at least 2018.
I recently spent the good part of a day on the phone with both of them regarding this very thing.

Well Adobe and Pantone are 2 different companies. Adobe hasn’t updated the Pantone range of colours since CS6.

If you have a Pantone book there’s a link on the first few pages that allows you to download the latest - follow the link, it should be free if you have the book and register your pantone books.

It seems like a bit of a disaster. When using the colour bridge you do not get a correct CMYK breakdown when the colour is applied within the programme. Kind of makes the whole idea of colour bridge irrelevant when within the programmes. Do you know of a way to upload the latest books without colour manager, as there seems to be no way to purchase anymore?

Doesnt seem to be a purchase option on that link anymore? I think colour manager is no more.

Sorry about that - but the pantone book should have the correct URL printed on it.

The issue is my book which was bought this year has a link to colour manager which is now not available. You dont need pantone book to install connect. I want to install my book as per manager used to but Im not sure you can anymore?

There is no longer a link in the books to Color Manager (as of 2019 near as I can tell)
Yes, Adobe is separate from Pantone, but if you are gonna offer an industry “standard” the sane thing to do would be to be consistant. IE Adobe should offer all the colors or tell Pantone to go pound sand.

As far as color Bridge, DON’T. Just don’t. The Bridge is an in-hand reference only. It is only showing you what Pantone thinks it’s colors will look like on a conventional CMYK press using the paper they are using in the Bridge. IOW, it isn’t meant to be applied on screen to printer-submitted files. Drives me absolutely insane. You can apply the CMYK values as you see fit and have experience as working within your workflow, but don’t expect the onboard Bridge colors to output correctly. The only way I can get them to do that is if I take the Bridge in hand and chart the damn color and swap it out. Hence my file prep fee. Other’s mileage may vary but most digital presses (at least wide format here in the US) are profiled to Pantone Coated swatches.
/vent rant severe display of loathing for Pantone

3 Likes

Oh, and should we get into Adobe’s concept of applying LAB values to Pantone colors so they appear approximate on an RGB screen? And that if you rename the Pantone colors in your swatch palette, the digital rip doesn’t recognize them as Pantones and prints out those incorrect LAB values?
And yes, people do rename their Pantone swatches in software. All. The. Time.
Renaming doesn’t matter if doing seps on a conventional press, but digital is dumb. It’s either a 1 or a 0. If it doesn’t recognize the Swatch Name it defaults to the numbers…
/yet another rant… gonna be a great day in an already great week.

Adobe didn’t apply LAB values to Pantone colours for an RGB screen appearance, nothing of the sort.

Pantone decided to go LAB for different CMYK workspaces, previously it was only defined as CMYK - but what version of CMYK, Gracol, Euroscale, SWOP?

There are many CMYK workflows.

The CMYK values you now get are not predefined bookvalues. They are colour managed conversions and the values depend on the document profile.

Before CS6 all the libraries were predefined CMYK values. With LAB you have the option to colour manage into any CMYK space.

The Bridge library can be used if you prefer the book values.

I was unclear due to time constraint


And even there, you aren’t gonna have all the profiles for all the media and ink combinations in play in digital.

That rant has more to do with people renaming the Pantone swatches, actually. Which has happened twice in the past 3 days. I don’t care, part of my job, and only justifies set up charges.

Yes renaming Pantone colours is pure crazy!

Even better ? Changing the CMYK sliders!