Changes to Pantone Color Books

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Some of the Pantone Color Books that are pre-loaded in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop will be phased out from future software updates starting in August 2022. To access the complete set of Pantone Color Books, Pantone requires customers to purchase a premium license through Pantone Connect and install a plug-in using Adobe Exchange.  

For more information, please refer to the following FAQ pages:

HelpX: Pantone FAQ (Illustrator) 

HelpX: Pantone FAQ (InDesign) 

HelpX: Pantone FAQ (Photoshop) 

[chrisg11235813]

Can Adobe just make us an .ai file with all of the swatches contained in a file, that we could download?

It's not like you are supplying us with a colour book.  just a file that happens to have all of the swatches contained within it.

I know its probably a legal grey-area.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom]

I know its probably a legal grey-area.

By @chrisg11235813

Oh, I don't think it's a legal grey area.

It's a legal 100% K area that would trigger patent, trademark, and copyright infringement lawsuits.

If you still use PANTONE swatches, then the $60/year payment to PANTONE is a cheap way to be continually up to date with the latest colors.

Personally, I have not used a PANTONE color or my now-aging swatch books for close to 20 years. When I print, it's in CMYK for critical color and I use a formal CMYK tint book for better colors than what PANTONE supplies.  Cheap on-demand printing is usually RGB and as long as the color come out reasonably close to what I want, I'm happy.

Now, if I was still doing print advertising and magazines, then yes, I'd cough up the bucks and continue with the PANTONE guides.

[chrisg11235813]

Fair point. I was being a bit facitious, lol. I am actually quite frustrated with this turn of events.   When a client supplies a file with pantone swatches, they are automatically in the swatch pallet of that file.  It is not illegal to use that file to print with,  I'm not even sure if it is illegal to have a swatch with "PANTONE" in the spot colour name.  It is a little like supplying a font with working files. It is ok to use for that project -- but not to share with other projects.  Pantones are how we know what colour the client is actually looking for. We both have a standardized reference so we can agree on what red is the correct red. Now a colour book that is searchable... probably illegal ... that is just nonsense!! -- well I hope some competing company has the ware-with-all to fill this void of a colour standard.

[NickFender]

I'm like you -- haven't touched my Pantone guides in years. I suspect this will not end the way the folks at Pantone think it will end. Clients today don't have the first clue about spot color usage. I'm gonna miss Reflex Blue, PMS 123 and PMS 485.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom]

Just like fonts, it's all about "monetizing" their intellectual property.

I wouldn't be surprised if PANTONE does eventually create a bot to search our files, whether on our computers or at a print shop, and determines that we have swatch PANTONE 485 in the palette but no license to use it. Hello lawyers!

Oh gosh, @NickFender, I didn't even need to get out my dusty ol' PANTONE books to instantly remember those colors. Gah!

[fredg22281574]

Just like Adobe.

BMW is getting on the subscription train and charging 18 dollars a month for heated seats

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom]

Que?

Renting heat-to-the-seat of your car?

[fredg22281574]

BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month.

BMW is now selling subscriptions for heated seats in a number of countries — the latest example of the company’s adoption of microtransactions for high-end car features.

A monthly subscription to heat your BMW’s front seats costs roughly $18, with options to subscribe for a year ($180), three years ($300), or pay for “unlimited” access for $415.

[Jeff Witchel, ACI]

You may want to check out my response in the Illustrator forum: https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/changes-to-pantone-color-books/td-p/13076187

[Eugene Tyson]

Where the palletes won't ship with Adobe any longer, you will not lose the swatch in your files.

If you've used Pantone Swatches in previous files then you can still access those to load into other files etc. 

It's just if you want new swatches or a swatch you haven't used before, you'll need to ay the 60 quid a year. 

Hopefully, Adobe can hash out a deal with Pantone to keep including them. 

Even as an optional payment (works out at 0.16 cents per day or 5 dollars a month)

I don't think it's a huge problem. If you need them - then subscribe to Pantone connect and increase your price ever so slightly to cover the cost.

[rob day]

I wouldn't be surprised if PANTONE does eventually create a bot to search our files, whether on our computers or at a print shop, and determines that we have swatch PANTONE 485 in the palette but no license to use it. Hello lawyers!

??? Does that mean because I have an Adobe subscription they can search my local files, or even the files I store on their cloud servers??? If that’s the case we need to abandon all of our subscriptions—Pantone colors would be the least of our worries.

Maybe @Rishabh_Tiwari  can confirm, but I don’t think there is any move to drop .acb support in future InDesign versions, so the current installed .acb files could be copied into a new version’s Swatch Libraries folder—you just wouldn’t have access to the newest Pantone colors.

Also, I’m not seeing any problem with sharing document’s that contain swatches that are not available in the installed .acb files—document swatches don’t have any connection to the .acb files used to create them. I made this file on a computer with the newest Pantone .acb file installed and opened it on a computer with the old CS6 .acb files, and there’s no problem with the swatch that’s not in the installed PANTONE + Solid library—PANTONE 3514 C is not included in my .acb libraries:

Also, when Pantone was selling the Pantome Color Manger app they explicitly stated on their site that swatches and.acb files could be shared without restrictions:

https://www.pantone.com/customer-service/help/?t=Sharing-Libraries-from-PANTONE-Color-Manager-with-W...