Seeing 435C, the Adobe-Pantone controversy.
Sandrine Bascouert
Creative Freelance Photo Retoucher & Artwork | A strong track record of getting stuff done | Adobe Community Expert
There have been a lot of furore about the - joint -?decision by Pantone and Adobe to cease the support of the Pantone colour book swatches in the creative suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Adobe color...).
Both companies issued statements, but both very low key, and not really explaining the why of the decision, which led to speculations, none of which has been backed- or denied by the companies. Leading to articles with outrageous headlines, admittedly click-bait material, such like this one:
This is the statement from Adobe:?
“In March 2022, the Pantone Color Libraries that are pre-loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe Color, and Adobe Capture will be removed from future software updates. "
and this can be found in the help files
Pantone statement, lays the blame on Adobe lack of implementation of the colour updates, even if it stressed that the decision was shared.
The move seems likely due to a change in how Pantone decided to licence its products, according to Scott Belsky (VP of Products, Mobile and Community at Adobe), who tweeted that Pantone now wants control over their customers.
The initial Pantone announcement also maintained that there will be no substantial change for older files, but some have already started to see their swatches replaced by black boxes. I checked the Pantone + CMYK coated, uncoated, Metallic, both solid books, and they work fine. I swear there there used to be more, but they are now gone.
Initially the change has been scheduled to happen in March 2022, but been implemented only in August, with Adobe's Ashley Still, senior vice president of digital media marketing, strategy, and global partnerships at Adobe saying:
“As we had shared in June, Pantone decided to change its business model. Some of the Pantone Color Books that are pre-loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were phased-out from future software updates in August 2022,”
“To minimize the impact of this change, we are working on an alternative solution for the affected products. Stay tuned for updates.”
Leaving hope for a workable solution that has yet to be announced.
The obvious solution is to cave in and pay for the Pantone replacement, its own app that offer added benefits (updated colours being the obvious one) but will cost ￡90 a year (or ￡15 a month) to use, with a 7 days free trial. The end-customer has now to pay for the licence, instead of Pantone granting the right to use the books through the software company.
You could have previously used Pantone's own resource website to convert Pantone colours to CMYK when in need, but this capability is now behind the pay-wall (The change was made prior to the announcement), so this is no longer a workaround.
There are lots of other colour systems available, supported with Adobe applications (such as Focoltone, ANPA, Trumatch, HKS etc) but of course, none is widely spread as Pantone is. There is no reason not to use those instead, as long as the designer and the rest of the manufacturing chain are following the same system - although , importantly not all of them provide printed books.
The obvious solution if you don't want to pay for the connect app, and only use Pantone swatches to read old files, is to save the ones you have to future proof your workflow.
Simply select all the swatches within a book, "add to swatches" and then save as an .ase file in illustrator.
However, that will mean that the swatches will be forever "old" ones, not updated, some colours not longer replaced or added.
But nothing is stopping people to create new systems too - like for example Stuart Semple with "Freetone"
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And I don't doubt, many more will follow suit.
On a personal level, even though I own an old, and limited, book, I very rarely use it, nor have a real need to. I used to have to match colours a lot more than I do now, when the imperative of retouching photos or designing for a digital output is more reliant on what kind of display the end customer see the product with ( a nightmare on its own right) than an accurate reproduction on paper.
Is it true that I design less for print than I used to, and I guess I am not the only one. That’s a trend that has undoubtedly informed the move to a subscription model from Pantone. The people who really need it will pay for it. They have no other choice (and will pass on the price on to their clients, obviously).
I hope it brings a bit of clarification to the debate, although it's difficult to know who to blame, the lack of transparency over the reasons for the change is probably what had upset most people at first.
Read the commentaries on linkedIn:
If you have any thoughts on the subject, feel free to comment below!
Well written Sandrine.
I'm spending so much each month on subscriptions!
Founder of PaperSpecs | on a mission to provide fellow graphic designers with tools and resources to create printed pieces that wow their clients
2 年Thank you for writing this, Sandrine Bascouert. It's a fair and thorough summary of what is a pretty sad business – the back and forth feels like a court transcript with all the fingerpointing. These two large companies have made designers' lives so much easier in so many ways, but this brinksmanship seems so unnecessary, and leaves us designers in the lurch. I'll have to check out Freetone – thank you for including them ??
Freelance Design Director/Creative Director
2 年I'm intrigued, as I've written elsewhere whether it's just been Adobe or other software manufacturers as well (eg. Quark)? Was the issue that Adobe weren't paying to licence the colours (ie. the CMYK splits were never the same as the Pantone official splits) or have Pantone just decided it's more profitable to offer them as standalone? As you say most of the official statements are pretty vague as to what's caused the rift.
Co-founder at digi-training | Digital design tutor | Helping individuals and teams maximise their digital skills
2 年This is a great loss, and although I don’t use spot colours often, this will probably mean I use them even less frequently.