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Participant
December 30, 2022
Question

Illustrator Pantone Solid Color Book

  • December 30, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 352 views

Why does my Illustrator Pantone Coated CMYK color chart not match my PMS Solid Coated Pantane Color Book anymore?  

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3 replies

Bill Silbert
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 31, 2022

Aside from the answers given you should know that PANTONE is notorious for changing their CMYK values without actually publicizing that fact. As a result the CMYK values of the SOLID Coated option has not matched the up to date PANTONE books for a very long time. Also, as Monika said, the Adobe values have been shown as LAB colors for quite some time. The CMYK values you get with those colors are based on an algorithm and tend to look good onscreen but in many cases are not really matchable using the standard CMYK printer inks. I've found that the CMYK Color Bridge option gives the closest representation to the actual colors that you may be trying to match. The fact that the PANTONE options will no longer be freely available within the Creative Cloud programs just clouds the situation even more.

Kevin Stohlmeyer
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 30, 2022

@michele15A7 see: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/pantone-plus.html

Do you have the current build of Illustrator and your acb/Pantone swatch libraries still installed?

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 30, 2022

The CMYK chart are fixed CMYK numbers made by Pantone.

The Solid chart contains Lab numbers that are converted to CMYK using your current color management settings.