pantone

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Hi fellow designers, how do you handle Pantone colors now that the libraries have been removed from Illustrator? I do have an old set of printed swatch books, but the colors don't match, and I don't want to buy a new one. Is there an alternative? Thanks.

justlearn

Community Expert

When a client specifies a Pantone color that isn't included in my older Pantone libraries, I usually confirm the color with the commercial printer who will be printing the job. I know the print shops that I have dealt with, have current Pantone references and can verify the correct spot color. If I need to preview the color myself, I sometimes use the Eye Dropper browser extension to sample the color displayed in Pantone Connect and create a temporary swatch in Illustrator (until I can get the confirmation). I didn't think to use Affinity Designer to install and confirm the color swatch. Great idea @Bobby Henderson

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Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

The thing that really needs to happen: Pantone ought to ditch that “connect” service -or at least allow Adobe to include updated swatches of the standard coated and uncoated spot colors in apps like Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. AFAIK Pantone doesn’t appear to be financially dinging Corel or Canva/Affinity for the spot color swatch books in their applications.

The physical Pantone swatch books themselves are already pretty expensive to buy. A pair of coated and uncoated Plus Series Formula Guide books currently runs about $250. Since colors can fade over time those color books are supposed to be replaced once a year. It’s pretty ridiculous to add another $180 per year on top of that to get access to updated swatches to use in Illustrator. Pantone’s connect service wouldn’t be such a bad deal if one fee of around $200 gave you access to the updated digital swatches AND a pair of physical color swatch books.

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Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

@rob day posted this link last week. You can download the libraries you want/need:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/el9yecvjv7g9l9m2g4vg8/AKGH42FgfsMAFoODKdAR6og?rlkey=v09wnuy7c06l1hzzjy4e904tx&dl=0

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David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

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Barbora5F9FAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you very much :)

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Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

Many users copied/saved the Pantone .ACB files from prior releases of Adobe Illustrator and then pasted copies of those .ACB files into the appropriate swatch folders of newer releases of Illustrator. Versions of Illustrator that had those Pantone color books are no longer available to download in the Creative Cloud desktop app. However, there are places on the Internet (such as GitHub) where those old .ACB files have been posted and can be downloaded.

The process works, but the only downside is the color books are years out of date. They won't contain newer colors. On the other hand, if those old Pantone swatch books are present in an Illustrator installation no Pantone colors will turn black in artwork, even when opening an Illustrator file that has new Pantone colors.

The situation with Pantone and Adobe appears pretty strange, like Pantone was singling out Adobe and its user base. Rival applications like Affinity Designer and CorelDRAW still have Pantone color books included. But Pantone's subscription-based Connect service isn't designed to work with those applications.

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