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DHArtDesign
Known Participant
May 20, 2019
Frage

Swatch Color Mode Type in Photoshop

  • May 20, 2019
  • 2 Antworten
  • 851 Ansichten

Hi,

I recently bought some Pantone guides and Pantone's customer support helped me export the colorbooks out for the new guides so I can have the new swatches in my Adobe programs. For Photoshop CS6, I imported some new Pantone color swatches from an .aco file into the program. How do I know if the swatches are in CMYK or RGB, Lab, or Spot colors for my projects? When they imported them, they filled my swatch panel with all the colors from the colorbook. There is no telling me if these swatches are in CMYK, LAB, RGB, or set up as Spot color swatches. Usually in Illustrator, a spot color is marked with a triangle and dot in the bottom corner of the swatch.

I feel like I am missing something very obvious and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best,
Dani

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2 Antworten

Norman Sanders
Norman Sanders
Legend
May 20, 2019

Dani,

Essentially every swatch in the Pantone set is a spot color. It is a solid value. When you choose a PMS color Photoshop's Color Picker offers a match that is a mixture of values in the RGB and CMYK color set. Often the mixture is quite accurate. Note that the Pantone color is keyed to its Lab value so that the recommended RGB or CMYK mixture in the conversion accommodates the particular mode and color space in which you are working. If the color is outside the CMYK ink gamut you are alerted to it. (Note the symbols in the Color Picker, and/or an exclamation point in the Info panel.)

Sometimes the mixture is close but not close enough for your purposes. On those occasions, usually when you are involved with commercial lithography with its more limited printing ink color gamut, and when a match to the PMS must very precise (Art Directors use intimidating words such as exact and perfect) -- for product labels and packaging, for example -- an additional Spot Color, usually as a solid, must be added. There Is a special procedure for adding a New Spot Channel. Check YouTube and if you need more assistance, post a new Forum inquiry.

(Note: Spot color may be a $$$ luxury. Check the budget).

    --Norman

Sahil.Chawla
Adobe Employee
Sahil.Chawla
Adobe Employee
May 20, 2019

Hi Dani,

The Swatches will be converted to the document color mode, but their names will not. So it depends on the color mode of the document.

Please check this article to know more: Use the Color and Swatches panels in Photoshop

Regards,
Sahil

D
DHArtDesignAutor
Known Participant
May 20, 2019

Thank you so much! I did not know that the swatches would be converted to the color mode when they are imported. If I import the swatches when my document is in RGB and then change the color mode to CMYK, will the swatches auto-convert to CMYK?

Also, how do I tell if a swatch is a spot color or not in Photoshop?

Thanks,

Dani

D
DHArtDesignAutor
Known Participant
May 20, 2019

Hi

The short answer is to create a spot color channel for the Pantone spot color. Details here:

https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-photoshop-working-with-spot-color-channels/

Jane


I see, so swatches aren't inherently CMYK/RGB or Spot in Photoshop--they are whatever the color-mode of the document is in regard to CMYK/RGB and the only way to get a spot color is to set up a spot color channel and then apply the color on the channel?

Please let me know if this is correct.

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