They are both right. Your error is in thinking CMYK is a single colour Scheme. Common error, but an error nevertheless. The actual colour of printer's inks varies and the conversions reflect that.

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

I have read that the reason that PANTONE has changed their values over the years is that as technology has advanced they have been able to use more accurate screens to simulate the look of their spot colors when they are produced using process colors. The Color Bridge colors reflect the latest version of the breakdowns.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Bill+Silbert schrieb
I have read that the reason that PANTONE has changed their values over the years is that as technology has advanced they have been able to use more accurate screens to simulate the look of their spot colors when they are produced using process colors. The Color Bridge colors reflect the latest version of the breakdowns.

Pantone cannot provide the same color values all around the globe. That simply does not work as even the plain offset process works differently in different regions. There's a reason for all these region coded settings in the color management dialog box and Adobe doesn't even include all available color profiles.

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

Over the years PANTONE has changed the CMYK values of its colors many times. Unfortunately, the CMYK breakdowns that are still attached to the spot colors libraries used in all of the Adobe programs reflect values that are at least ten years out of date. However, if you were to use the PANTONE + Color Bridge Coated library which you can find in Illustrator through Window>Swatch Libraries>Color Books>PANTONE + Color Bridge Coated you would find that those CMYK breakdowns match what you found on Pantone.com. Once you’ve found that library choose the option under that library’s pull-down menu “Persistent”. Quit the program then and when you reopen it that library will remain open for future use. This library will default to separating process but if you double-click on the color once you’ve moved it into the Swatch Panel you will see a pull-down that you can toggle between process and spot. If you’re an InDesign user you will have to switch the color mode to CMYK for this to work. In my agency we use this library all of the time as it allows us fast flexibility in switching spot colors to process with the assurance of the correct CMYK breakdown. Naturally, if you are using uncoated colors or any of the other options you would use the appropriate Color Bridge version of that.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Bill+Silbert wrote
Unfortunately, the CMYK breakdowns that are still attached to the spot colors libraries used in all of the Adobe programs reflect values that are at least ten years out of date.

There are no CMYK breakdowns attached to Pantone Spot color libraries in Adobe Applications anymore.

These have been replaced by Lab values that are used to convert to CMYK using your CMYK ICC profile.

The results are different for various printing processes and printing inks in various countries.

Pantone Plus color libraries

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

The US values are still quite different between the US Coated library and the US Color Bridge Coated library. See screen shot:

Of coarse they are.

The Adobe one is calculated from Lab values and the Pantone Bridge one is fixed and based on whatever Pantone decided it should be.

The Pantone Bridge values will give a different result with different inks from different countries on different paper with differen printing processes.

There are reasons to use Pantone spot colors.

One is that they generally cannot be reproduced with standard CMYK process inks.

That means that whatever simulation you try to make with process inks will look different compared to the solid spot color.

The conversion is a matter of taste and almost never accurate.

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