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Pantone Colors Converted to Black Error

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
October 13, 2022
6 replies
23859 views

This morning I opened a large group of files that have been seperated for multiple Pantone spot color and CMYK and recieved this error on each highliy refined image file: "This file has Pantone colors that have been removed and replaced with black due to changes in Pantone's licensing with Adobe. To resolve, click "Learn More" From there i Installed the Pantone Connect Extension and linked my purchased license for premium..... But the colors of the spot channels are still rendered as black. Any swatches I create with the extension are rendered properly but Pantone Spot colors are not rendered correctly because the color information for those channels is not available to Adobe Photoshop.

The work around for this issue is to double click the spot color channel in the channels pallet and click on thee color then enter the Lab values from the Pantone Connect Library. Save the file and the channels will be rendered to the display properly.

Cross-app workflows

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Correct answer David Cardillo, PRH

Amybeth, I see in your image it adds a channel named "9344" and not "Pantone 9344," which is what the swatch is named when added as a swatch in Illustrator and InDesign.

Does that create a conflict/duplicate swatch?

Also, what is the version number of this plug-in update?

(And does it still require Rosetta to run on an M-1 Mac? so many questions...)

Amybeth M. ACI G7

Community Expert

So this just happened "add to channel"

Adds the spot channel to Photoshop 2023

Amybeth MACI G7 Certified Expert

Amybeth M. ACI G7

Community Expert

Screen_Shot_2023-03-24_at_6-14-37_AM.png

Amybeth MACI G7 Certified Expert

Bob_HallamAuthor

Legend

Well that actually helps! Thanks for letting us all know Amybeth!

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

Bob_HallamAuthor

Legend

Just a comment after running a Pantone color workflow Post Adobe support. Opening and saving any file not has many warnings to clear before you can actually complete the process of editing and saving. I do understand that at first these warnings are important, but let's give the user the ability to turn them off Please!

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

D

David Cardillo, PRH

Inspiring

I would disagree.

Any warning of "what you're about to do will cause bad things to happen" should pop up any time someone attempts it.

One of the problems we have in our environment is the checkbox for "do not show this warning again." People who checked this, for example, for the warning about PS Type 1 fonts going away, ceased to be warned that the files they were working in contained T1 fonts.

The warning in Bridge that the option to view a panel with "show items from subfolders" turned on can cause serious issue for larger directories has this checkbox! Someone who turns this warning off then navigates to the parent directory of a season's worth of titles on a server is in for a really bad time.

No. More warnings. More of the time.

Amybeth M. ACI G7

Community Expert

I agree, a yellow stop light reminds me to slow down... and look both ways– before I get side swiped 🙂

Amybeth MACI G7 Certified Expert

Kevin Stohlmeyer

Community Expert

Update: Photoshop versions released in August, September, and October 2022 will continue to render Pantone colors Gray/Black unavailable. Updating to the November 2022 version of Photoshop will fix this workflow.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/pantone-color-books-photoshop.html

D

David Cardillo, PRH

Inspiring

all one needs is the ACB files that were installed when the art was created. You can move those from any previously installed version of Photoshop.

They're in: [Photoshop application folder]/Presets/Color Books/

You'll get that error if the color book used to create the art is not installed.

You'll get that error if the *version* of the same color book is not the same one that was used. Spot color references in Photoshop are specific to the book version. You could spec a color as Reflex Blue, for example, using the ACB files that Adobe was previously distributing since 2012, then upgrade your color books to the most recently released version from Pantone (currently v4) and you would still get a "color book not found" error, even with the same-named color. The reference is to another book file.

Amybeth M. ACI G7

Community Expert

On another note, if you have the old Pantone Color Manager Application, which Pantone doesnt advertise but it will still work untill December 22, 2022, with a valid serial number from a chip or fan book, you can still register the app and export all the current libraries to Indesign , Photoshop and Illustrator.

And as an added bit of information Pantone has currtently combined the Premium Metallica libraries witht the Metallic Libraries. So if you are wondering why you cannot find Premium metallic it is because they merged the libraries. GTK when your remapping!

Amybeth MACI G7 Certified Expert

D

David Cardillo, PRH

Inspiring

on the plus side, all these PS files will still work when placed in InDesign. They'll work when sent to a printer. It will only appear when you open the files for editing.

Bob_HallamAuthor

Legend

One caveat to the files still work is that if those files must be converted to another color system or back to RGB for editing, then you must assign the correct CIELab values to each channel.

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

D

David Cardillo, PRH

Inspiring

So it looks like Adobe went ahead and did what they said they were *not* going to do, and that's remove existing Pantone Color Book files from your system.

Yes, we all knew they were no longer going to give them out (let alone update them). But the presumption was that the existing ACB files you'd already downloaded wouldn't be pulled off in an update.

Here's something you can do: if you have a previous installation of Phototshop, in the application folder, in the Presets folder, find the old Color Books folder and get all the Pantone ACB files in there and copy them to your new installation.

We ran into this situation frequently (channels being converted to black) because we had been using the (now defunct) Pantone Color Manager app to update our ACB and ACE files to Pantone's latest versions. (Currently V4)

Spot color references in Photoshop are to a specific color book — not a color name. You could spec a color as Pantone 186 from the original Pantone ACB file, but that wouldn't be the same Pantone 186 from the 2010 Pantone+ ACB file.

Our enterprise would use the most recent updated books, with the newest colors, which were often incompatible with the older books. We would spec a color with the V4 books (even a base ink, like Reflex Blue) and someone who did not have the V4 books installed would get the error "this channel references color books not installed" and the channel would be black. The fix was to just reassign the color to the same name from an installed book.

Pantone Connect is *NOT* a solution for not having _any_ books installed. Pantone Connect cannot create spot color channels (as you are clearly finding out). Pantone Connect can only create swatches — which are created in the color model of your art (RGB, CMYK).

If you don't have a previous install, find someone who still has them, or use the CC app to install a previous version that still has them. Unfortuately even saving out an ASE file out of Illustrator will not get you color book files. Those need to be ACB Color Book files.

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

I haven't seen this myself, my understanding was that legacy files would be OK and it was just moving forward that the colour books wouldn't be available for selecting for new colours.

Bob_HallamAuthor

Legend

I wish that was the case Stephen. The files I opened were from earlier versions of PS from 2022 that used to display properly. It's an easy fix, but I wish Adobe would pick up the CIE Lab values from the Pantone Connect Pro licensed tool.

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

I have 2021 and 2022 installed. I just made a spot channel referencing a Pantone Solid Coated book directly (not going back to the color picker). Then opened it into 2022 and the Pantone Solid definition was recognised, so I can't reproduce the issue.

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