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.

[Pretty annoyed]

You cant print in RGB, RGB is for screens, so this is confusing as to weather or not you are aware of how the colour systems / printing works. I personally think Adobe should bring back the Pantone capabitlities.

[rob day]

The Pantone swatch books are .acb files that are installed in your Swatch Libraries folder:

⁨Applications⁩ ▸ ⁨Adobe InDesign 20XX⁩ ▸ ⁨Presets⁩ ▸ ⁨Swatch Libraries⁩

You can still manually install .acb files, so the change is that the Pantone .acb files are no longer automatically included in an upgrade install. You should be able to save the .acb files from an earlier version and manually install them yourself—.acb files are like fonts or plugins, you are not limited to what gets installed.

You cant print in RGB, RGB is for screens

But you can make color managed conversion to the print space anywhere in the workflow. RGB color can be converted to CMYK on an Export to PDF by selecting a CMYK destination profile in the Output tab.

[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...

[rachelk10752544]

I wonder how this effects the rest of the community that prevously has the pantone books and the ase files from our previous purchase and downloads.We have 4 instances of Adobe CS5 with all of our Pantone Plus catalog with our stack of swatch books. I'm the only one currently running CC 2022, and I have the ability to load up the ase file on it's own, curious if they will lock down that abillity also.

[chrisg11235813]

you can still any colour book you have access to,  they just wont come preloaded with Adobe software.  Basically you just won't have the any "new" colours.  Which is really only hurting Pantone's bottom line.  Customers wont ask for new inks, because they are not in their Adobe colour book libraries. Print providers wont order the inks because clients won't request them. I guess its a "win-win" for everyone ?!

[rob day]

This link has two InDesign documents with 2,651 Pantone+ coated swatches, and 2,056 uncoated. The books are easily searched, and you can click a fill and drag its swatch into any document. The linked directory also has a script that copies the selected fill’s swatch to the document behind:

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/cdac4aa5-ebad-42d1-5a89-9cc0e015f2fa

Format is this:

[alanw45989708]

This is ridiculous! Adobe should cover this additional cost. Why is it up to us to cover the cost. Is it the reason why I subscribe to CC to cover all cost related to any applicaton under the Adobe's umbrella. Adobe do better!

[Eugene Tyson]

Why should they? It's not part of Adobe. 

You can buy a subscription - last check was about $50 a year. 

Pass the cost on to the consumer. 

Plus - you can still access all the Pantones from previous files and use them - nothing stopping you doing that. 
Adobe Bridge can help you find files containing certain colours. 

Other than that - that's the way it's going. 

Nothing Adobe can do about it - for now. 

Pantone want people to get their own subscription. 

[@mj]

Hi @Rishabh_Tiwari ,

Please consider giving a warning dialog for Pantone colors instead of taking it to Black.

Highlight colors like missing fonts. Then allow users to convert the colours to:

1. CMYK
2. RGB
3. Hex
4. Other supported spot color palettes like DIC, Toyo, Focoltone.

This workflow would be way more helpful

Thnx

mj

[Eugene Tyson]

Report bugs or make a feature request

https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

[Pretty annoyed]

This is super annoying! Why has Adobe done this? Please reconsider having accessiblity to pantone colours back in your applications.