Major issue with Pantone....I need your help.

[Jeff Mottle]

Hey everyone,

 

Got a problem that I hope someone out there can help me figure out.

 

At Smoothe our corporate logo is standardised on Pantone 549U. However I am running into some major issues trying to figure out the RGB values. I've polled a few people via MSN and we are all getting a different value. Not only that we get different values between applications. Further to that enabling color managment afects how the RGB value are read too!

 

This is what I get:

 

549U:

 

Photoshop Color Managment off: 98/144/170

Photoshop Color Managment on: 113/143/168

Freehand: 93/132/153

 

This is just nuts!! For one regarless of color management, the color by the numbers should always be the same. Well that's what I thought and aren't Pantone colors supposed to be standardised!!??

 

Anyone out there with some heavy print industry experience that can help shed some light on this.

 

I'd also be curious to see what everyone else gets for RGB values for 549U.

[Sawyer]

Sorry Jeff in ps I get the same rgb as you

 

98/144/170

 

but then in illustrator:

 

72/139/155

 

maybe I did something wrong

 

[ May 14, 2003, 05:43 PM: Message edited by: Sawyer ]

[jucaro]

I don't have Illustrator here, so I used CorelDraw.

 

98/144/170 saved as TIF and imported in Corel reads the same RGB values

 

But, 549U in PS reads as 131/174/201 in RGB Corel, converts to 549U when switched to Pantone mode.

 

Btw, color management was ON. My RGB color was just slightly darker than my Pantone Color, But it almost closely matches my Pantone Color swatch template when printed on a Xerox FX C831 laser printer

 

[ May 15, 2003, 07:09 AM: Message edited by: jucaro ]

[Guest Gleggers]

Is this of any use?

 

http://www.authorgraphic.co.uk/pantone.htm

 

'No guarantees as to accuracy' tho'

[Jeff Mottle]

Hey Gleggers,

 

Yeah I saw that site and they have yet another value for 549U....this is crazy.

[David Knourek]

Originally posted by Jeff Mottle:

This is just nuts!! For one regarless of color management, the color by the numbers should always be the same. Well that's what I thought and aren't Pantone colors supposed to be standardised!!??

Yes the Pantone colours are standardized but for print and not for digital.

 

Which still doesnt explain the differences in actual R/G/B values for the same colour in different apps as they will likely display different but the values should be the same. Although on another side the Pantone breakdown for 549 is C-60/M-0/Y-0/K-30.5 which is a slightly brighter blue than the actual spot colour, I happen to have a Pantone Solid to Process imaging swatch guide here and the two are noticeably different. As far as trying to match the colour for web, your best bet mite be to eye it the best you can to match the pantone swatch, like on smoothe's current site. But keep in mind almost every other monitor on and off the planet will display a different colour.

 

Anyway my PS 6.x using prepress settings that I've created for local print shops here is showing R/G/B 109/147/171 and CMYK 60/0/0/31 for 549U.

 

-dave

[Jeff Mottle]

Thought I'd post an update.

 

I spoke to Pantone and it turns out that the colorspace does affect the RGB and HEX numbers for a given Pantone color. The colors that are defined by Pantone are defined in the sRGB CS so any other CS will read differently.

 

 

I also found that part of my problem was the workflow. If you save a Pantone color as a JPEG, even with the best quality, the color will not save the same. Only formats like GIF (Exact Pallete), PNG and PSD will not affect the color. It looks to be a property of the JPEG compression algorithm.

 

Anyway there is it...who knew.

 

BTW the tech support at Pantone is really good.

[Sawyer]

Thanks for the update Jeff - good to know.