manwith2shoes wrote: ... Here's an example of what I'm seeing. ... From the attached untagged (without a color profile) image no one can tell what you are seeing on your monitor. The only thing that others can see is that you may be seeing different colors but not what colors. Just think about it - if you use the hardware controls of your monitor to change its RGB signals you can change completely how colors are displayed and even you can turn your monitor off and you will see nothing but with your computer still running the software has no clue that you have messed up your monitor display or turned it off and if you press the screen capture button it will make an image "displayed" on your screen that others will see on their monitors in a completely different way. In order for an image to be displayed the same on two different monitors from different computers, both monitors have to be calibrated to the same color temperature, profiled with a color measuring device, and the receiving monitor has to have the same or wider gamut. The image has to contain a color profile describing the meaning of the color values and the display of both monitors must be handled by a color managed software in the same manner (the image you posted here is viewed in various web browsers some of which may be color managed but still with different way of handling untagged images) manwith2shoes wrote: ... I created a new CS 6 document and pasted in all the content with NO changes. It looks nothing like what we're hoping to create... In the document or in the Illustrator version where the color looks right, double click the pantone swatch in the Swatches panel. In the Swatch Options dialog that opens, from the Color Mode menu, choose CMYK. Write down the CMYK values. Go to the problem document and do the same but enter the CMYK values you took from the "correctly" displayed document. manwith2shoes wrote: Is it safe to assume that in actual printed production, PMS 173 is the same as Pantone+ 173, even though they look completely different on screen? Yes, it is safe as long as the name of the color in your document is PMS 173. The offset press operator doesn't use a monitor displaying your file and has no clue what you are seeing on your monitor. The operator will see only the name of the Pantone color from your file and will pick the can with that ink for printing this spot color. So, if you double click the swatch of your Pantone color and choose any color mode even HSB or Web Safe Colors that no printer can use, and change the color values to make a completely different color, as long as the name of the Pantone color stays the same, the printer will always print the same color as shown in the Pantone Formula printed books. On the other hand if you change the display colors to match perfectly the colors in the books on your screen but change the name, say "My favorite red" and send this file to the printer, your phone will soon ring and the print shop will tell you that they checked all shelves with ink cans and can't find such ink with a label "My favorite red" manwith2shoes wrote: ... What makes me suspicious is that if I convert the PMS color to CMYK, I actually get a different build... That build in the older libraries using the CMYK method was decided by Pantone trying to guess how you monitor will display color values and how process colors on various printers and media can eventually print something similar to the spot colors in the Pantone books. If you don't rely on color management, for display on your monitor just open the Swatch Options dialog as I described earlier, choose what ever color mode you like and values that can match as close as possible the color in the printed Pantone books on your screen.
... View more