Pantone Screens not showing in Acrobat or Print

[Danmiller35]

I work at a commerical print shop and we've had an issue for a little while now where objects that are set to screen (or multiply, etc) that are a pantone color do not show up in Acrobat. They also don't show up on the printer. As soon as I change the colors to CMYK, they show up just fine.

This recently popped up where a customer had tried to color a QR code with a screen of their Pantone blue and we didn't even know it was there because it just showed up white. Has anyone else had this issue? My guess is it's related to the Pantone libraries being removed from Adobe products but I'm not quite sure why it's having issues in the PDF.

*Also, I know we can just preflight the files and convert everything to cmyk but our printers have pretty good spot color matching systems so we like to leave it in there in case we need to tweak the color on the printer. It has to have a spot color value in order to be edited on the printer.

[AnandSri]

Hello @trevettsd43915286

I hope you are doing well. Thanks for reaching out, and we're sorry for the trouble you had.

This issue is likely tied to a combination of:

Transparency blending issues: When Pantone spot colors are used with blending modes (e.g., Multiply, Screen), Acrobat may fail to render them correctly if the overprint preview is off or if the spot color is not fully defined in the PDF.

Overprint preview settings: Acrobat’s default display settings may not show overprinting spot colors unless explicitly enabled.

Suggestions: 

To enable Overprint Preview in Acrobat, go to Menu > Preferences > Page Display and set Use Overprint Preview to Always. This ensures spot colors with transparency are rendered correctly on screen.

Preflight and Flatten Transparencies: In Acrobat Pro, use Print Production > Preflight to check for transparency issues. Use Flattener Preview in InDesign or Illustrator before exporting to PDF. Export using PDF/X-4 or PDF/X-1a standards to ensure compatibility. 

Ensure you have the latest version of Acrobat installed: 25.001.20531 (Win) | 25.001.20529 (Mac), planned update June 10, 2025. Check for any pending updates from the Menu > help > check for updates, install the updates, restart the app and the machine, and try again.

If the issue continues, please provide the following information: the current version of the operating system on your device, a sample PDF file showing the issue, and the logs from the affected machine. To collect the logs, download and run the Log Collector tool. Make sure to select all log options and attempt to reproduce the issue. After that, close the Log Collector tool; it will generate the logs along with a log ID. Please share this log ID with us for further investigation.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

[Danmiller35]

I do have Overprint Preview turned on. In fact, if you turn it off, it will
show up.
However, that doesn't quite solve the issue of it not showing when printed.

Also, these are customer provided files and we don't often have the source
files so I can't go back to AI or Indd and change settings.

As far as the spot color not being fully defined, I'm not sure what you
mean by that.
The color is defined in PDF and has a cmyk alternate value assigned to it.
If Acrobat doesn't have the library, shouldn't it still just use the cmyk
values?
It does that for objects that don't have a Transparency blend.

I am on 2025.001.20476 for Mac. (MacOS 14.7.5)
I can't easily update as it usually breaks other plugins that I use.
However, if a fix has been implemented in a more recent version, then I
will look into updating.
As I said, this problem has been going on for a while now, possibly since
the Pantone libraries were removed from Creative Cloud.

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Dan Miller
[Personal info removed by Adobe employee and moderator]

[AnandSri]

Hello @Danmiller35

Thank you for sharing the additional information. While you mentioned plugin compatibility concerns, we have made improvements in how spot colors and transparency are handled in recent updates. If you can test on a separate machine or VM, it may help confirm the issue.

Pantone Spot + Transparency = Flattening Conflict
When a spot color is used with a transparency effect, Acrobat relies on the alternate color space (usually CMYK) during flattening. If the spot color is not fully defined (e.g., missing Pantone metadata or ICC profile), Acrobat may fail to render or print it correctly.

Overprint Preview simulates how spot colors will behave in print, but it doesn’t guarantee that the printer or RIP will interpret the transparency correctly, especially if the spot color is not recognized.

I will also check internally and share more details on this.

Thanks for your time and cooperation.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Also a prepress guy here: I haven't experinced this issue yet. Can you share the PDF (DM me if necessary).

What's your RIP scenario? What program was the file created from? and how did they color the QR? (e.g. did they apply it in ID to a b&W tif, or..?)

[Danmiller35]

I can't share the file but it looks like it was created in ID and applied a screen over a b&w image.

According to Pitstop, the rectangle covering the QR Code is set to "Screen". 

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I've been able to reproduce it. and it confirms what I thought what is happening:

Say the QR code is defined as pure Black 0C 0M 0Y 100K

On top of that they placed a rectangle of a Pantone Colour (e.g Pantone 2995) and applied Screen to that.

Because Screen was applied InDesign now calculates it under the Transparency Blend space of the document.

If it's CMYK Blend Space, then the Pantone is converted to CMYK (say, 80C 7M 2Y 0K), then Screen is applied in relation to the Background colour (0C 0M 0Y 100K). The result is the lighter* (smaller value) of each channel, hence 0C 0M 0Y 0K. Poof, it's gone.

*Screen and Lighten work similarly but slightly differently, so I'm paraphrasing here by saying it's the lighter of the two values.

Conversely, if was RGB Blend Space, the QR code would be converted to an RGB object (27R 27G 27B), and so would the Pantone 2995 rectangle (0R 168G 226B), and the result would be lighter (higher) values, hence (27R 168G 226B), a bit lighter than the full Pantone Colour because the QR code doesn't necessarily convert to a pure RGB Black.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

(This is all to say that they need to apply the colour differently) 🙂

[Danmiller35]

Can you please clarify how the color needs to be applied differently?

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

I'm assuming they want a specific Pantone color for their QR code? Say the QR code image is a B&W/Greyscale TIF. Select that directly in InDesign and apply the Pantone to it; no transparency effect needed. Of course, if their image is something else, like an RGB Black, it would be worth their while to change it to a pure 100K greyscale, then any colour can be applied as above.