Participant

Question

Pantone colors look muted

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
March 6, 2018
4 replies
3386 views

Hello, I need some help. I'm having trouble with Pantone colors in Illustrator CC. I'm working off of a Pantone Color Guide (the physical swatch book) to find the color I need. Specifically, I am using Pantone 607C (a light yellow color). When I select that color in Illustrator CC, the color looks very muted and dull. It should have more yellow in it. It's not just my computer screen. We took the file to print and sure enough the print was dull and muted and did not match up to the swatch. I tried working in different color modes, used overprint preview, etc. Still having trouble. Having a similar problem in CorelDraw. Clearly I am missing something. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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M

mayakutisAuthor

Participant

Thanks so much for all the feedback! And thanks for the screencap, CHM.

I'm pretty sure my problem is twofold - 1: my monitor isn't calibrated correctly (as was suggested) which I knew, but even looking at the swatch on 2 other monitors didn't make much difference. However, when I view it on my phone is looks more yellow and closer to what I was originally expecting. Go figure.

2: The printer isn't able to print as close to the pantone as we thought. We all know this happens and their output can change as they make adjustments to their machines. I'm going to have them print some swatches for me so we can get a better idea of what color(s) we need to request from them.

Thanks, all!

M

Mariam Hovhannesyan

Community Expert

Try to open in another computer, maybe the problem is in your display color mode

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

If I compare your color with the color on the Pantone website, they look almost identical muted and dull.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Is your color management set up appropriately?

M

mayakutisAuthor

Participant

Are you referring to the print settings when going to print? We outsourced the printing for this item (it was a vinyl banner). I assume the printer let the application manage the colors but I don't know for sure. Normally we just eyeball the color we want on screen and it prints fine, but in this case we needed it to be really specific.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

I'm referring to both the general color management settings in the application and the settings when creating the PDF.

Both need to be made appropriately for the output.

You might want to watch this:

Color Management Fundamentals

(paid training)

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