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Hello,
I am having a problem with matching the colors in my Pantone book with the colors on my screen. My screen is calibrated with the colormunki display. The adobe suite is synchronized and I use fogra39 as my working space.
I have looked up a color in my Pantone+ uncoated guide: a deep dark red (1797c). However, when selecting the swatch in illustrator it shows up as a pinkish red. It does not match the color book at all!
Also, the cmyk values of this swatch are entirely different than what is is in the guide.
Can anyone tell me what the problem is?
Ps. I have overprint view on and use lab colors to show spot colors. My monitor is normal gamut, but I can reproduce the color with my own cmyk mix. So my monitor can reproduce the color.
On my iPad (Pantone app) and in de Pantone manager I also see this pinkish red color, which does not match the color in the book...
Thanks!
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Off course, I meant 1797 U.
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What OS are you using and what version of Illustrator? Sounds like your calibration is out-of-whack. What type of monitor are you viewing the swatch on?
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Hi John,
I use illustrator and Photoshop cs6 on Windows 7. My monitor is a Dell U2412M.
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Try sending the question to Pantone.com and see if they have any answers. I have read elsewhere that CS6 has a few issues with Spot Color previews. Wish I could nail it down for you, but I can't help you with this one.
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Want to see worst? Check the same color 1797U from the Pantone + Bridge Uncoated!
It turns to Orange! Definitely, their CMYK build (Bridge) is very bad. Not even a CMYK reference profile is supplied for their CMYK recipes! ;-(
On my side, with Pantone + Uncoated, the 1797 is a faded red on the pink side like you are reporting.
My monitor and evertything else is calibrated and I run it on Mac.
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Louis, I'm not sure why Pantone is messing with their libraries. I can apply a Pantone Solid Uncoated 1797U to am element in Illustrator ( I have CS3 on Snow Leopard; and CS2 on Tiger ) and the element looks like the book color ( rust ). The CMYK equivalents are the same in both versions 0c, 100m, 99y, 4k. What are you guys getting?
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Hello John,
For Pantone + Uncoated 1797, I have C1 M87 Y89 K4 (this does not look or match the solid uncoated color at all). This is the "default CMYK mix from Pantone + Color Bridge and it is more to the orange side.
Your CMYK color (old Pantone Librarie) seems to match the COATED color and not the UNCOATED "look".
This is because Old libraies were not making difference between Coated and Uncoated color match. They used the SAME CMYK mix.
The new Pantone + libraries, uses Lab in order to transmit the information ("the look of color") to your CMYK working space in order to get the best CMYK mix.
What do you think?
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Louis, that's what I don't understand. Why all of the confusion? There was a system in place that worked. This is a huge workflow issue I do not want to encounter and is one of the reasons I have several version back and will remain here until they can get their heads out of their ( you know whats ). I think it sucks that modern software versions are throwing everyone's expectations down the toilet. Makes no sense to me and I don't hear anyone throwing an argument in favor of the new software and new Pantone technologies.
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Hello John,
The problem I se is that if graphic designer choose Pantone UNCOATED, does it means they want to match the look of Pantone COATED on Uncoated stock? OR they just want to to match the the look of what they sees on the UNCOATED color book? This is the problem I think Pantone wanted to solve with the new libraires using the Lab color definition for each paper type.
I agree that this is a bit confusing for everyone. But even worst… is the Pantone + Color Bridge. Pantone provides CMYK "unviversal" mixes that is not working (matching) with any "ISO" CMYK color working space profile commonly used in Adobe Suite. They say that those CMYK values have been defined, based on ISO printing standard BUT they don’t provide the ICC profile that could help to get close to THEIR CMYK mix.
Hope they are listening or reading! 😉
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There is one point which nobody have made mention of, which also is something anyone who works in print should know about.
The first thing to know is that there are some Green and Red Pantones that are IMPOSSIBLE to reproduce on screen because of the limitation of the RGB gamut. (The RGB of screens can only reproduce a bit more than 60% of the real-life colors and around 50% of the Pantone are situated inside the remaining missing 40%. Almost EVERY Pantone, on your charts, that are situation on the 2 top and 2 bottom positions are not reproducible on screen.)
So, it's always normal that some Pantone never look the same between a screen and the Pantone chart even if the screen is calibrated in the best ways and that is why you uses a Pantone chart. The Pantone chart isn't just a "decision" tool, but also a "preview" tool so that you can see the exact final color regardless of what's on screen.
If that is not working with your workflow, then it simply means that your workflow is flawed as it's how it has been made to be. It's not a choice, but a limitation of physics with computer hardware which you have to live with as a professional.
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I believe your explanation might be flawed.
I can replicate what looks like Pantone 1795U on my screen with a different combination of CMYK values than what Pantone is providing. That means it IS possible to preview a color on a monitor that looks close to the Pantone swatch, but they have supplied incorrect calculations for conversion to screen.
What's aggravating about this beyond being unable to visually preview a project, is that designers are paying a premium for tools that are faulty and force us to guess at things we should be able to rely on.
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MicheleAlise wrote:
I believe your explanation might be flawed.
I can replicate what looks like Pantone 1795U on my screen with a different combination of CMYK values than what Pantone is providing. That means it IS possible to preview a color on a monitor that looks close to the Pantone swatch, but they have supplied incorrect calculations for conversion to screen.
I built a patch with the definition of Pantone 1795 and took it into ColorThink Pro to plot it's color gamut. Compared to sRGB which is the gamut of many displays. It easily fits into sRGB gamut. So yes, there's no reason to believe it can't be viewed on screen.
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thedigitaldog​, thank you so much for your response. How can one use this methodology to get closer to the correct color appearance?
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MicheleAlise wrote:
thedigitaldog, thank you so much for your response. How can one use this methodology to get closer to the correct color appearance?
Calibrate and profile the display of course.
Why are my prints too dark?
A video update to a written piece on subject from 2013
In this 24 minute video, I'll cover:
Are your prints really too dark?
Display calibration and WYSIWYG
Proper print viewing conditions
Trouble shooting to get a match
Avoiding kludges that don't solve the problem
High resolution: http://digitaldog.net/files/Why_are_my_prints_too_dark.mp4
Low resolution: https://youtu.be/iS6sjZmxjY4