Pantone question

kenthekid

Member
We've recently dealt with a customer sending us a PDF file with embedded Pantone colors. Now, I am familiar with the letter
used to assign a particular substrate, ie., "C" , "U", etc for coated, uncoated, but we received two Pantone colors, one with a
"CV" and the other with a "CVC", for example, Pantone 158 CVC. These Pantone colors didn't exactly reproduce the way they
probably should have as the Pantone libraries drawn upon for Prinergy more or less just came kinda close in interpretation.
It's one of those mysteries we'd like to solve and would greatly appreciate a point in the right direction.
 
Re: Pantone question

Pantone acronyms:

U = uncoated paper
C = coated paper
M = matte paper
CV = computer video (electronic simulation)
CVU = computer video - uncoated
CVC = computer video - coated
 
Re: Pantone question

CVC, CVU ect have been used a while in "older" Adobe software like Illustrator 9.0.

As mentioned above CVC stands for Computer Video Coated which roughly means that a spotcolor, in this case, Coated, is simulated on the the computerscreen, which is only logical. I assume that Adobe and Pantone agreed that this is actually irrelevant to mention as all colors your monitor shows are simulated in an RGB ICC profile.

Interesting to know, in CMYK ICC powered digital printing, when you want to print a PMS color as good as possible it is advisable to output it through its LAB values instead of its default CMYK. CVC however does not output through LAB as I have experienced. In recent Adobe software, like CS, CS2 and CS3 you can tell the software to use it's "LAB" values for output. This can be previewed with the "overprint preview" mode in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Indesign. Mind you, PMS colors and CMYK are totally different colorsystems, matching a PMS color in a CMYK environment is not always accurate, even if you use the LAB values.
 
Re: Pantone question

Presuming that you're going to print and these are to be spot colors, the suffix only matters if its causing you to get additional plates. Most RIP software allows you to "map" the colors to each other so if you have Pantone 185c, 185u, 185cv, etc. You just tell the RIP that they are all Pantone 185 and all belong on the same plate. Hopefully the client understands that the spot color will look different depending on what paper it's printed on.
 
Re: Pantone question

The BEST solution for converting Pantone Colors to CMYK is to use Tintbook which is an actual CMYK book printed - ink on paper.
With over 25,000 color combinations it is easy to select the screen combination that will give you the closest match and then enter the
percentages into your color palette. It eliminates all the guesswork and disappointments.
 
Re: Pantone question

Had a similar experience with a PDF that had both CVC & CVU which was output on a laser toner digital engine and gave two distinctly different colours. It would appear that the digital was trying to emulate coated and uncoated finishes. The only solution was to get the customer to edit the original file.
 
Re: Pantone question

There is a discussion of this topic in a thread in the Illustrator Mac forum on the Adobe forums. Post #6 by Mordy Golding in that thread gives links that put CV, CVC, etc. in both technical and historical context:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.59b5585c/5

Mordy's second link explains the connection of this problem to Overprint Preview as mentioned by John Beeckaert earlier in our thread here.

Al
 

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