kevincwalina wrote: ... Below is a screen grab of what I am looking at. ... No one can tell what colors you are seeing on your monitors when looking at your screen grab on another monitor. First of all, you posted a untagged (no color profile) RGB jpg image which doesn't describe the meaning of (a way to display) the color values on my monitor. Second of all, even if you had embedded a color profile with the image, it will be valid only if you have a calibrated and profiled monitor that displays correctly the meaning of the colors. All I can tell from your image is what RGB color values your video card is using when rendering the colors you specified but no one can tell how your monitor is displaying these color values and thus what you are seeing. kevincwalina wrote: ...One thing I noticed is that the CMYK valused that the style guide is called out are different from the CYMK values that pantone called out in the Pantone plus color bridge. ... The Pantone colors in programs represent inks used on offset press. They don't represent anything else. In programs like Illustrator, when a color value like CMYK, Lab, RGB, etc is used to represent a pantone ink for display on monitor or for printing with process colors, it represents a match either originating from the lab definition and converted from color management or by the CMYK definition, both provided by Pantone. The CMYK definition used in the older Pantone color libraries and for that matter the RGB values specified in the new (all) books (not software libraries) were created by a decision from Pantone. They do not represent the printed result on any particular media and the display result on any particular monitor. As such they can output very differently on different print media and displayed differently on every monitor. The purpose of these values, at least in my view, is to have something than nothing regardless how useful it is. The lab values (definition) however are really useful. The Pantone color is defined based on its appearance to human perception independent of any device output and defined as such with lab values. From there it is converted by color management to any particular color space of the device used. Depending on the gamut and other parameters of the output color space of the device there could be various different color values representing and matching as much as possible the same color as it appears to the human eye. kevincwalina wrote: ...This is a screen grab from the style guide file, note the RGB icon under the 100% ... Note the number 2 next the PMS 295 U. This means that someone duplicated the swatch, and in the Swatch Options (double click on the swatch to get there) changed the Color mode of the sliders to RGB. kevincwalina wrote: ...Now this is what happened when I copy pasted the above color into another document, Note the RGB icon is now magicly a CMYK icon... No magic at all, you are comparing different colors 295 U 2 and 295 U. When you paste spot colors between different documents regardless their color mode the original color mode definition of the spot color remains. kevincwalina wrote: ..So, I feel like I know a little more about what's going on, but I have no idea about why and what this means. Is there any way for me to use the color from the style guide with the RBG icon so it previews closer to the color? And is that a mistake, am I setting myself up for having it print incorectly by doing that? I'm so used to only sending CMYK to printers that I get scared to send them anything else. They will be printing banners on a digital press so its not technicaly CMYK printing there are some other colors involved in the process so I'm not sure what to do at this point... The little icon under the spot color in the color panel shows how the spot color is defined and not at all that it is going to be printed with the values of certain color model - you can define it even in HSV and Web Safe Colors too but no printers will print in that mode. If you print separations the spot colors will be printed in addition to the CMYK plates, If you print composite all colors will be processed in the color space of the printer depending on the color management setup. If someone is sending you CMYK values representing a pantone color, you have to find what they want from you. Do they want these values printed on a certain printer or do they want to get a printed color that appears the same as it appears in their pantone book? The last one may not be possible if the pantone color is out of gamut used by the printer. kevincwalina wrote: ...The bigger question I have is about the LAB color. Now that I understand what is going on, what I don't get is why the New and improved version of PMS 295U is so radically different from the color swatch in the printed swatch books. One would think that the older CMYK version would be the one that would be off, since it has a smaller gamut to work in. LAB is supposed to have a greater gamut so you would think that it would be the one, in theroy to be closer in color to the printed version. This I just don't get. Perhaps the LAB color for this specific color is just screwed up? and I happened to be giving the one color thats off? Any thougts?... Looks fine here, it matches the color in the book. I'm comparing it in a RGB document but even in CMYK document it is slightly off gamut there making a very small change. I'm using CS5 but I have the plus libraries installed. Double clicking on the swatch in the Swatches panel shows the lab value of 33/-2/-22. From there the color is converted to the RGB color space of you monitor for display. Making a screen capture and measuring the values show what RGB values your video card is using for displaying it. As I said, is your monitor calibrated and profiled? You can't expect accurate color representation on screen without this. @Wade, check what it says in the note on that page "* Before using, understand that the colors shown on this site are computer simulations of the PANTONE colors and may not match PANTONE-identified color standards. Always consult PANTONE Publications to visually evaluate any result before utilization." I checked the html source code used for this pantone color on the page and it showed this: <img src="/images/clear.gif" style="background-color: rgb(0, 47, 95);" border="0" height="120" width="120"> </td> and you are also comparing a color managed image with a non-color managed code with rgb values without any meaning directly sent to your video card.
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