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Pantone Spot Color Libraries to be removed from Adobe Illustrator?

Community Expert ,
Dec 08, 2021 Dec 08, 2021

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I just saw a notice in another forum that Adobe plans to remove Pantone color libraries and their associated swatches from several Adobe applications, including Adobe Illustrator, in 2022. Is this true? Are there more details about this and the possible work-arounds?

Some of the large format printing work I do involves use of various Pantone spot colors applied to various objects in things like logos and other brand assets. Our large format RIP applications in conjunction with our printers do a few things above and beyond what a typical CMYK formula can do to mimic a solid ink spot color. So we use the colors when appropriate.

Are all of the Pantone color libraries going to be removed, or just outdated "legacy" libraries? Is this a situation similar to the one with Dolby that led to Dolby encoding options being removed from Premiere and Audtion? My shop already spends a decent amount of money on physical Pantone swatch books. It's going to stink if we have to pay extra above that just to get corresponding color chips built into an application.

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Adobe
Community Expert ,
Dec 08, 2021 Dec 08, 2021

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Seems like they are going to be removed in march 2022.

There is supposed to be an alternative solution. See:

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

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Community Expert ,
Dec 08, 2021 Dec 08, 2021

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I wonder who decided this would be a good idea. Obviously I don't know any of the licensing details between Adobe and X-Rite (the owner of Pantone) to include electronic swatches of the various Pantone color books within Adobe Illustrator. Has Adobe always had to pay some sort of fee to include the color books? The Pantone swatch books have been available in Adobe Illustrator going back for many versions. Electronic versions of the same spot and process color books have been bundled with several rival applications as well.

I always assumed the Pantone electronic color swatch libraries were included in applications like Adobe Illustrator as a sort of "loss leader" to get users to buy the physical color swatch books for accurate, real-world color referencing. If the swatch libraries are removed from Illustrator (and other Adobe applications) that will just end up giving Pantone far less visibility as a spot color standard. That could result in considerably less product sales for X-Rite.

My workplace already gets quite a lot of client-provided artwork that is RGB-based. And some of it is very problematic for converting into CMYK. The Pantone colors at least worked as a sort of bridge between the two color models. Plus, customers could look at a physical swatch book to get a close but not exact idea of what would be printed. Or they could compare the Pantone chips to color chips from a paint company library or roll vinyl colors for cut vinyl graphics. I don't think very many people outside of an actual graphics production environment are willing to spend the money it costs to buy those color books (and do so every year or so to keep colors up to date). The prices for physical swatch books are starting to get a little ridiculous. If X-Rite wants to pay-wall the Pantone color swatches behind a $60 per year subscription (on top of blowing $200 or more for a physical swatch book) they're going to wind up with considerably fewer people using the colors.

I guess I'm going to have to start figuring out ways how to mimic spot colors like that in  L*a*b* values as a work-around. I don't know. I'm already dealing with enough headaches as it is involving home-brewed client files and what not. This Pantone situation is going to be yet another thing that turns into a time-suck.

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Community Expert ,
Dec 08, 2021 Dec 08, 2021

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Community Expert ,
Dec 09, 2021 Dec 09, 2021

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I'll have to remember this for March when the complaints start flooding in...

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