Thank you for that, NB. I'm aware of ICC profiles as an additional parameter that needs to be defined/provided for consistency. I'll look more into your articles about color management at some point.  Thank you guys, for all the comments about the "digital first" approach and the law of physics — I'm painfully aware of that, and if timing and planning were entirely up to my team we'd have done it differently. But that's where we are now, and I'm here to find out what the best way is to tackle PMS and CMYK breakdowns — from where we are. ... View more

All good points. Thank you, James.  Conversions are suitable as a basis, and for first approximations, I agree. The same is true when the colors make it to the guidelines — they are, just like other assets and guides, a recommended ideal. But you want this ideal to be as good and consistent as possible.  I'm interested in the color managment tool you mentioned above.  ... View more

I'm well aware of that, Bob, and I wholeheartedly agree. But... a) it's too late now, and b) the need arose from a digital and brand positioning need that called for bright, clean colors you can't get in PMS. With the dominance of digital, this may not be an unusual process, and you wonder if the industry is willing and able to accommodate that "reverse" process. How about Pantone starting by widening the color range and by adding more digital-friendly colors and tools? Sure, CMYK/print gamuts will always be a somewhat limited compare to RGB, and often "muddier" because of adhesives and surfaces, but common, we can do better! ... View more

Sounds like there's no easy, more efficient way. I'm using older (outdated) swatches in CC apps, and we bought recent swatch books for coated and uncoated PMS and the (supposedly matching) bridge fans, plus a subscription for the lowest tear Connect. In addition, we may get one of these old-school (non-tearable) CMYK swatch books.  Pantone printed swatch books (or any other) will always represent specific circumstances and cannot satisfy all possible paper and print-environment parameters — in the best scenario they'd cover for an average situation, whatever that means. Theoretically we could just skip the CMYK definition and leave it up to the respective printer to figure out the best translation (closest CMYK match to PMS) — that's what the PMS standardization is meant for anyway. In our case though, we're interested in manipulating CMYK values to get beyond the limited PMS range and push some of the colors to better match the already defined, brighter/cleaner RGB/HEX brand colors. For that reason I first want to try to find the best PMS and their "best possible" CMYK equivalent as a basis to go from. That at least was my plan, but I have some doubts about this being the best method. And I hope to still find a "better" PMS to CMYK translation tool.  On a side note: not all the printed Pantone swatches can be found in the respective Bridge fan – some of them are missing. Go find Yellow 012 CP, 803 CP or 802 UP for example. I do believe that Pantone, considering its monopolized position and ridiculous pricing, should do a better job accommodating its clients. It's always been flawed, and probably always will be, but they do it long enough to correct at least some of the most painful quirks. Also, the two industry behemoths Pantone and Adobe need to cooperate better and listen to their client's needs — they happily take our money. ... View more

I am latching on to this thread. I wanted to ask Eugene where he gets his "typical" conversion values from and ask James for a link to his "fairly reliable color site." I need to translate an entire RGB/HEX brand color palette (a wide range!) to PMS and CMYK values for print output, and I wonder what the best process is for me to get there. The existing RGB/HEX palette takes advantage of the wide gamut and has bright, clear, clean colors that will be hard to match in PMS and CMYK, but I need to get the closest, best matches, and I'm looking for an efficient way to get "good" matches quickly.  I need close standard/average PMS and CMYK values for the brand palette — I won't be able to determine the palette colors by test printing with all the different vendors on different materials. We may be able to do some test printing for individual jobs but even for those I need "good values" to go from – a standard PMS/CMYK palette that matches as close aspossible the RGB/HEX palette, if that makes sense. Thank you! ... View more

Has this been resolved?! I'm having the exacrt same issue. My external SSD hard disk (2 TB, 1.67 TB free, USB C 3.1) https://www.adorama.com/vdlstks20400.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwKyjmqiMggMVwkxHAR3YsANSEAQYBiABEgIWyPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&utm_source=inc-google-shop-p is properly formatted and connected via the MacBook's Thunderbolt 3. While Illustrator let's me add a second/external scratch disk in Settings, Photoshop doesn't let me do that. There's no other option besides the MacBook's hard disk in PSD. ... View more

As per my screenshot of the View menu in my previous post, all snapping options are off (except Smart Guides is checked on, but I don't have any guides on this document) – do you want me to turn snappings on? Without the stroke it seems to work fine – why is that (doesn't seem to make sense to me); does that mean I can't work with shapes that have strokes/outlines? ... View more

Scale strokes and effects is off ... View more

Hi Monika,  The circle has a 2px stroke; no snapping active (as far as I'm aware). ... View more

Hi,  I'm not sure if this is exactly the same issue, but I keep having trouble to work with even numbers in illustrator. Quiet often it jumps ro unwated/randome fractions/decimals. That happens if I try to draw geometric shapes, position them or scaling them. To explain and illustrate, let me focus on one scenario here.  Let's say I draw a perfect circle. I now want to round the numbers, in this example from 447.3015 px square to 400.00 px square. With "Constrain Witdh and Height Proportions" still selected I type in 400 px Width. I'm getting 400 px width but 399.7687 px height. Why not 400 px by 400 px?! See screenshots below. ... View more