Pantone Color Manager (rant)

chevalier

chevalier

Well-known member
< rant >

Pantone,

Forcing people to register a swatch book and download /install software to get access to legacy color palettes is extremely intrusive and annoying. Why the hell do I need to restart my Mac just to install a color swatch program? What kind of intrusive crap are you installing in the background? Why not focus on improving the quality and consistency of your swatch books rather than angering and alienating your customers?

Also, for a designer focused company your website is hard to navigate and poorly designed.

Very annoyed,
Chevalier

< /rant >
 
It is easy to complain about Pantone - but...

1. "Forcing people to register a swatch book and download /install software to get access to legacy color palettes is extremely intrusive and annoying."
-- yes, but they developed it and are no charging you for it, and they need to make it compatible with many applications and many versions, yes ?
-- if you don't want it, or don't need it, don't bother.

2. "Why not focus on improving the quality and consistency of your swatch books rather than angering and alienating your customers?"
-- not sure if you fully grasp the challenges of printing such a book. Lets start with the fact that the paper companies can't make a decent sheet. Now, we have all these brighteners.

I agree that their site could be easier to navigate.
 
re:1
Yes, they are charging me for it. It's built in the costs bundled into the swatch book. When you rework your color system (defacto THE color system) that has existed since the 1960's you should at least be prepared to support the legacy system and make the transition as simple and painless as possible. I need it to do my job as Adobe (and Pantone) has not made it easy to work with many legacy InDesign and Illustrator files that use the old/new swatch books.

re:2
I've seen the videos and read the literature of exactly how the swatch books are produced. I've seen variance between the same printing of the same book wider than many of my customers spec for their production work. I've never seen a video or heard of Pantone bragging about their QA processes and procedures though.
 
@ chevalier

re:1
That is an interesting 'idea' - but it is not really accurate - Pantone used to get licencing fees from Adobe / Quark which is how it was 'baked into' the applications. That is no longer the case. The color system changed as the paper and print conditions changed - this is especially true of the Color Bridge product. The Pantone tint for Pantone 151 in the 1964 "SWOP" version of color bridge is quite different since SWOP paper was quite a bit more yellow and it was 133 line screen. There is no such thing as Legacy in the world of print, as the paper color and screening changes pretty dramatically !

re;2
I was just pointing out that Pantone has no control of paper manufacturing, and that is in large part the issue of 'variance' I worked for Pantone in 2002 - it was Carmen Gallo's biggest challenge - finding good paper. It has only become worse.
 
I didn't mean to imply the Pantone color matching system hasn't changed over time only that it has been around for a long while and the Pantone+ shift is a rather major one.
 
What bugs me is when I plug in the serial number from the coated guide - it is rejected as being invalid. I then type in the different number from the uncoated guide - and it is rejected as being invalid. I have tried multiple times and I don't think that it is user error. If I then tether an X-Rite hardware device, the software will run, however this ties up a USB port and I only have two on my MacBook Pro. I am happy to use a spectro and tie up a port when I really have to, but not to make a software program work due to the license key not being accepted.

Don't even get me started on i1 Profiler and the lack of features compared to the the two apps it replaced.


Stephen Marsh
 
michaelejahn said:
@ chevalier

re:1
That is an interesting 'idea' - but it is not really accurate - Pantone used to get licencing fees from Adobe / Quark which is how it was 'baked into' the applications. That is no longer the case. The color system changed as the paper and print conditions changed - this is especially true of the Color Bridge product. The Pantone tint for Pantone 151 in the 1964 "SWOP" version of color bridge is quite different since SWOP paper was quite a bit more yellow and it was 133 line screen. There is no such thing as Legacy in the world of print, as the paper color and screening changes pretty dramatically !

re;2
I was just pointing out that Pantone has no control of paper manufacturing, and that is in large part the issue of 'variance' I worked for Pantone in 2002 - it was Carmen Gallo's biggest challenge - finding good paper. It has only become worse.
Click to expand...

Just to add, the Pantone book (PMS to Process) is printed to the SWOP specs, or at least that's what was printed in their old books. Density 1.00 Yelo Mag 1.40 Cyan 1.30 K1.70. problem is the dot gain was 20%Mag and 24%Cyan (the spec was 20%Mag/20%Cyan) so that's a 4% "cast" towards Cyan. Plus there isn't a color bar reference to be found, wouldn't it be nice to have a simple gray bar at the end of each color strip to confirm. . .MAYBE NOT.
Dan
 
Look at Pantone 165 through the years. Talk about a color shift!


The one that leaves me scratching my head the most with Pantone is that they make a book for "designers" but where's the book for the production side of things. Who thought that a press operator should go to an index to find the "page and row" then flip back through the book. Just not optimal in a production environment.
 
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