Pantone Solid Swatches Missing from 2023 update

[jessicam74434607]

Has anyone had any issues with the Pantone solid swatches missing in 2023? I just updated it and those are the only color books that are missing (and the ones I use the most). Can someone help me get them back? 

[terryt90277445]

Thank you. After following this thread, I found your solution concise, easy & worked perfectly.

[chrisg11235813]

Find the swatches from a previous version of the software:

swatches are located here (on a Mac):

/Applications/Adobe Illustrator 2022/Presets/en_US/Swatches/

i'm not sure what versions you have on your computer. it might be an earlier version, but location is pretty much the same.

copy the .acb files you want, paste them into the new version of illustrator.

/Applications/Adobe Illustrator 2023/Presets/en_US/Swatches/

restart illustrator -- they should be available again.

Don't forget to save those libraries somewhere else too, so you can easily pull them the next time your software updates.

[jopress1966]

Thank You!

[gustavoyanco]

I grabed the .acb files from a windows PC and installed them in my mac. No issues, I had no need to restart, the color books just appeared.

[Dominic247483247m0e]

Thanks a lot, it worked !

[monicaf]

thank you So much! It worked for me too

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

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

[Bobby Henderson]

This situation with Pantone is just unspeakably stupid. I mean really really stupid. We've seen other things removed from Creative Cloud in the past. Dolby encoding was pulled from Audition and Premiere Pro. Font Bureau and I think a couple other firms pulled fonts from the Adobe Fonts service. Support for Postscript Type 1 fonts is ending. But this thing with Pantone angers me more than any of these other downgrades.

It's bad enough those of us who need to use Pantone spot colors as references for color matching have to spend a ridiculous amount of money on the physical swatch books. Those things are expensive! A Pantone Formula Guide containing 2 swatch books (coated and uncoated spot colors) costs close to $200. And you're supposed to replace them on an annual basis since the printed colors on all those paper strips can fade over time and get damaged with use (and Pantone adds new colors from time to time). I guess that's not enough money for X-Rite or whoever owns Pantone now. They want an extra $15 per month for digital copies of these colors on top of the high cost for the physical color books. $15 per month is $180 per year. That puts the cost of fooling around using Pantone as a reference at upwards of $400 per year.

I've always looked at the digital versions of Pantone swatch books as a loss leader -as a way to sell the physical books and other real world materials. Or the digital swatches could be called a form of advertising for the physical books. If new colors get added to the digital swatches it might do more to convince users to buy new physical swatch books that match. If Pantone wants to erect a pay-wall for their digital swatch books they may just see the reverse happen. We could see a lot of people saying "NO" to paying nearly $400 per year and just shift to using different color standards to define branding. In many company branding guide books I've already been seeing them list RGB, CMYK or Hex values for their colors along with Pantone. I could see companies shift to using L*a*b values. I just don't expect to see Pantone coming away making more money and gaining more users. If anything they're going to lose a lot of customers instead.

Pantone claims Adobe hasn't updated the digital representations of Pantone's swatch books since 2010, which I think is a bogus charge. For instance I remember the Subway restaurant chain updated its brand in 2016, using new "Pantone Plus" spot colors. It took a few months but those spot colors showed up in subsequent releases of Illustrator (and other graphics applications). I don't know how many Pantone spot colors are missing from the Illustrator 2022 swatches compared to a current Pantone Formula Guide book, but it can't be a lot.

Digital versions of Pantone's color books are still present in rival graphics applications, such as CorelDRAW. Large format printing RIP applications interpolate those spot color books as well. Is Pantone going to install a pay-wall on all of those applications?

I think this opens the door for Pantone's rivals to make some gains in the market. Pantone isn't the only company selling and promoting spot/process color libraries. Adobe could even get into the business.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer · Accepted solution]

With all the misguided flack thrown at Adobe, to their credit they started to address some of this directly with workarounds and solutions via software updates:

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

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

[creative_curiosity1549]

It's bad enough those of us who need to use Pantone spot colors as references for color matching have to spend a ridiculous amount of money on the physical swatch books.

...

I think this opens the door for Pantone's rivals to make some gains in the market. Pantone isn't the only company selling and promoting spot/process color libraries. Adobe could even get into the business.

By @Bobby Henderson

The existence of the digital libraries didn't spare you the need to have the physical books. I cannot envision a situation where it was enough to stare at your screen in order to be able to tell how the color would look printed. And to be really sure, you'd better be present at the printing machine.

And as for the rivals: the Panotne matching system is a recipe of mixing 18 basic inks to get those thousands of colors in the color book. Entering that market will be tough. There is 50 years of experience (and reliable workflows built on it) in it. And I'm not even sure that there is still a lot of profit to make. Pantone tried to migrate from their trusty system over to Pantone Goe and they tried to migrate to yet another one that I don't even remember the name of. And failed. So when your customers don't even migrate to Pantone's own new system, will they migrate to that of a competitor? Probably not - not just because those print houses will still need to provide the Pantone mixing system for a couple of clients for years to come.

For the CD of the small local company you might need to be able to just take whatever color sample to your local print house and ask them to mix that color, but for an international brand this might not be possible to first create the color and then roll it out to different print houses all over the world. That's where you need people like Pantone.

With their color plugin they don't only get your money. They also get your data. They know precisely which colors are used at a certain time in certain business areas in certain places of the world. And not only that: they also know which colors are considered in first steps of projects. So they know which colors are trending, but not quite ready for primetime.

[Bobby Henderson]

From Pantone's point of view, it would seem nice to know which colors are trending via collected user data. But they're running a high risk of ending up with a much smaller pool of users from which to track data. I think a lot of others are going to opt-out. Those of us who have been buying the physical color books feel like Pantone is trying to double-dip on us. And they're doing so when price inflation is bad in so many areas. So it really raises the anger level.

I can't speak for other users, but I've always had physical copies of the Pantone swatch books on hand. It wasn't just to have a real-world example of those spot colors. The physical swatch books allowed real-world comparisons to other colored materials such as translucent and opaque roll vinyls for vinyl cutting machines, colored acrylics or paint formulas. The Pantone swatch books were also good for seeing how well a large format printer did at simulating a spot color in a printing test before doing a final print job.

Digital versions of Pantone's color swatches are worthless without the physical color books. That's why I think it makes absolutely no sense for Pantone to put the digital versions behind a pay wall. The digital swatches are advertising for the real world products. If users have no free/easy access to the digital swatches they're not going to be too inclined to buy the real-world physical color books either. And people who have back-ups of old digital swatch libraries and copies of outdated physical swatch books might just try getting by with what they have rather than upgrading.

There is a large number of users who primarily generate artwork for display on electronic screens. If any of them have been specifying Pantone colors in their artwork they can simply stop doing that. They don't need to blow $180 per year, per computer to continue what is technically a bad practice.

I think Adobe could get hurt at least slightly by this situation in terms of people opting to use rival software for certain projects that require Pantone spot color use. The Pantone Formula Guide V4 swatch books are still present in CorelDRAW and Affinity Designer. Other rival applications may include the color books as well. Corel includes "previous version" swatches as well as the V4 "plus" range. Neither Corel or Serif have issued any warnings about the Pantone color libraries being removed any time soon.

[chrisg11235813]

If you have purchased a physical colour book, I believe it gives you acess to the PANTONE subscription. I want to say a full year,  but maybe not.  There might be a way to download a cloour book for later use once your subscription runs out...

I am just going by a fuzzy memory of when I had a recent colour book though..

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

That ship sailed a long time ago with Pantone. You no longer get subscriptions with the new Connect feature. The older Color Manager is set for EOL (end of life) next week.

[chrisg11235813]

Good (not-so-good) to know.  If you need me, I'll be sulking in the corner.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Come join the rest of us... Not something to be thankful for this week! 🦃

[creative_curiosity1549]

I think you get a couple of month free access to the Pantone plugin with each physical product you buy. Or did they cancel that as well?

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

We recently purchased a new set and nothing was noted or included with complimentary access to Connect besides a note to download for a free trial which was the same deal as a normal user can get.

[chrisg11235813]

Used to be, that you would enter the serial number in the physical book into the Connect extension to gain access.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Correct and we've done that in the past to gain access to the Color Manager online and download swatches, however that service is ending in Dec 2022.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Edit: They pulled the plug already. Must be a Black Friday special. 😕

https://www.pantone.com/pantone-color-manager-software

[chrisg11235813]

As long as it's not a PANTONE Black® Friday special

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

lol. Pantone ULTRA Black. Trying to complete with the Vanta Black crowd.

[TravellingDan]

Pantone are a bunch of greedy corporate misanthropes. Subscription to use their matching system.  Doof! It's like a shop saying come in and buy our products, but first you have to pay to step through the door.

[Brennan5FF5]

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/1/23434305/adobe-pantone-subscription-announcement-photoshop-illust...

Here's an article from the Verge about the new subscription for Pantone Colors. Not sure if it only applies to US or if it is internatnional. Some companies I work with are in Canada, anyone know about how this affects Canadian users?

[creative_curiosity1549]

The Pantone libraries have been pulled out all over the world.