The Pantone colour system has been the industry standard in spot colour selection for as long as we can all remember. Adobe has been the industry standard for design tools for as long as we can all remember. Unfortunately designers and printers across the globe are now facing additional licensing charges from Pantone in order to continue using their colour books with standard Adobe software such as Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.
What is the new Pantone licence and do I need it?
If you are a digital designer only, this really won’t affect you. Nothing is changing with standard digital profiles of RGB, HEX, or even print based profile CMYK. However if you are a creative director, a graphic designer, brand manager or printer, in order to keep using Pantone colour books you will need to pay a new Pantone licence fee.
Back in June, Pantone decided to change its business model. With this, most of the Pantone colour books that are usually pre-loaded in Adobe Creative Cloud programs were phased-out from future software updates around August 2022. Now, by the end of November, the only colour books available will be Pantone + CMYK Coated, Pantone + CMYK Uncoated, and Pantone + Metallic Coated.
It is outlined on the Adobe website that “The following scenarios apply while using any Pantone Colour books in Illustrator:
- Illustrator files with swatches from Pantone colour books will function as before when opened or placed in Illustrator (inclusive of past or future software releases).
- Illustrator files with place-linked Photoshop files that use spot channels render Grey/Black in Illustrator when colours from Colour books are no longer available.”
Basically any PSD file that uses spot colours will appear grey/black when opened, no matter how old your file is. You can read more about this in this article from Computer World: Your company brand may soon be held hostage to Adobe, Pantone.
Unfortunately, if you are a creative that works in the design of offline collateral, merchandise, packaging or printing, you will need to obtain a new licence with Pantone to continue using their colour books.
So what do I need to do to keep using the Pantone libraries in Creative Cloud?
If you are a creative that relies on Pantone in your daily workflows, in order to continue using the Pantone colour books in your Adobe Creative Cloud suite, you will need to download the free Pantone Connect App from Adobe Exchange. In addition, you will need to purchase a Pantone Connect Licence from Pantone. The licence costs £14.99/month or £89.99/year per user.
Are there any alternative colour systems to Pantone I could use?
If you are an experienced creative or printer you will know that the answer unfortunately is… well not really. The Pantone colour system has been the standard in the industry for decades. Profiles such a CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key) use a blend of these colours to reproduce a specific required colour, but there is a margin for error with various printers and processes which often results in difficulty to achieve consistent results. With a spot colour there is no mixing process, the colour is reproduced perfectly each and every time providing almost guaranteed consistency.
With this said, using spot colours can often increase printing costs so many smaller brands tend to lean towards a four colour (CMYK) print process for most of their printed collateral. Bigger brands rely on the very specific colours achieved by the Pantone colour library in order to maintain consistency throughout all of their promotional material at every touchpoint. Depending on the clients that you are working with you may choose to advise your client of the positives and negatives of each and let them decide what direction they would like to go in.
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