Pantone colors not matching 1

[jmgalvin]

Posted in Indesign, Illustrator, & Photoshop forums

A poster on Tek-Tips, Mac OS, asked why the PMS colors in Photoshop did not match the PMS colors in Illustrator or InDesign for OSX.

Since this interested me, I did the following – all with CS versions of the programs purchased as Creative Suite Pro. All apps have their color profiles the same.

I created an Illustrator document, drew a box, and filled it with Pantone Solid Coated 1797C, a fairly bright red.

I create a new 600 dpi CMYK Photoshop document, drew a rectangle, and filled the rectangle with Pantone Solid Coated 1797C – same as the Ill document.

I pasted both the Ill and PS items into a blank InDesign doc. The colors were not even close. The Pantone 1797C from Photoshop much darker than the Ill Pantone 1795C.
I then drew a box directly in the Indesign document and filled it with Pantone Solid Coated 1797C. That was a dead match to the Ill 1795C and WAY off form the Photoshop 1797C.

I opened Apple’s Digital Color meter and ran it over the various P1797C objects. The Ill and ID elements registered, Red at 89%, Green at 0, and Blue at 19.6%. The Photoshop element registered 80.8% red, 0% Green, and 23.9% Blue – a large difference from the ID and Ill P1797Cs.

I ran Digital Color Meter over the originals in each of the 3 CS apps and got the same result.

It appears that the Pantone colors in Photoshop are different than the other 2 CS apps. Since I generally use PS for photographic work and Ill for scratch creation of objects, I had never noticed this.

As a Workaround, I created a one color box in Ill and pasted it into an empty layer in PS in order to import the same red as Ill and ID.

Does anybody know of anything that I might have missed?

 

[Foamcow]

That's because it is not meant to matter.

Pantone colours are not intended to be printed in any way other than via the use of special ink mixes. Which means that the same pantone reference could look TOTALLY different in every application yet when printed with the correct ink mix they will always look the same.
Some of the mixes contain white pigment which gives a vibrancy to the colours that cannot be achieved with conventional CMYK process colours. There are also metallics, flourescents etc.
In short Pantone is a special ink system, it is a formula system for mixing ink which allows designers to select colours based on swatches and have confidence they will always print the same.

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[jmgalvin]

Actually, it matters a lot because the imported 1795C from Photoshop does not match the Pantone mixing formula as defined in the Pantone solid to process guide.

Pantone's guide call for 0%C, 94%M. 100%Y, 0%K. In illustrator and InDesign the Pantone colors register to that formula.

If you bring a tiff or psd into an ID or ILL document, the imported Photoshop Pantone 1795C registers as 9%C, 100%M. 96%Y. 2%K.

Adobe forums have quite a few posts regarding different color output from various CS apps.

 

[MarcusStringer]

I take it you monitor is calibrated?
Also, How does it look in Acrobat?

Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[jmgalvin]

Marcus: Yeah, it's calibrated, although that wouldn't matter since all the differnces would show up using the same 3 apps at the same time on the same monitor, and it looks just as bad in Acrobat, but there's an answer - obtained from a smart guy on an Adobe forum.

If you use Pantone Solid in Ill and ID, use Pantone Solid to Process in Photoshop. Solid to Process uses the same numbers as Solid. Then, if you import a photoshop psd or tiff into ID, the colors match perfectly, same RGB and CMYK values - and they look the same to the eye. I tried the fix and it works.

There were quite a few questions on the Adobe forums from people getting different color values from different CS apps. Most of the replies to them were somethiign like "you don't know what you're doing". The fact is that, at least in this case, Adobe - at best - did a poor job of documenting how to use the programs together.