PANTONE worldwide colors differences
- Thread starter Dario
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gordo
Well-known member
I don't believe that's true. The lab values do change over time and are often not synchronized between the apps that use the Pantone spot color picker - but that's not because of regional differences. As I understand it the lab values are to aid in converting a spot to cmyk rather than as the target for the color itself. The color is determined by the ink mixing recipe that Pantone provides.
Tim-Ellis
Well-known member
All Pantone books are printed on the same press in New Jersey. However, that press suffers they same issues any other press so the colour will drift. I believe that in the small print of each book you will find they allow a tolerance of 2 delta E between books. That is before they ink begins to fade in the sunlight. So there is no guarantee that your book and your client's match.
Pantone keep a record of all the LAB values for each colour. They share this with software firms licenced to supply Pantone colour books within their software package (e.g. Adobe). However software firms have sometimes adjusted those values for their own reasons ( i.e. Adobe).
I wonder if the story you heard was about the Pantone colour bridge book. The CMYK printed in that book would be a USA formulated ink. So in Europe do those CMYK values have any meaning?
Personally I never pay much any attention to those numbers in colour bridge.
Pantone keep a record of all the LAB values for each colour. They share this with software firms licenced to supply Pantone colour books within their software package (e.g. Adobe). However software firms have sometimes adjusted those values for their own reasons ( i.e. Adobe).
I wonder if the story you heard was about the Pantone colour bridge book. The CMYK printed in that book would be a USA formulated ink. So in Europe do those CMYK values have any meaning?
Personally I never pay much any attention to those numbers in colour bridge.
Dario
Well-known member
Over one year ago I did ask to PANTONE customer care: "Is it possible to view LAB values of PANTONE colours using your PANTONE Color Manager software?"
They replied: "Yes, you can view LAB values. You will need to check that you have exported them from Color Manager into you design software. Click File, Export, LAB."
So the real answer is "you cannot".
I have more to say. Just today we checked a PANTONE Coated Guide using Xrite Exact and the PANTONE LAB values built in into the reader itself. Guess what? A check on a random swatch - cool gray 5 c - showed a 4.5 DeltaE !!
Correct Color
Well-known member
No. It is not true.
The one unchanging constant in Pantone colors is the ink formulations themselves. Get any formula book, on any stock, from anywhere in the world, and compare the ink formulations, and they'll always be the same.
That's what Pantone colors originally were/are: Ink formulas. Mix up the component colors in the requisite amounts, and you've got yourself some Pantone Whatever. And it's Pantone Whatever, and that's its ink formula, regardless of the media on which you print it.
L*a*b* values for those ink formulas came along relatively late in the game. What has happened and the explanation for it I saw a few years back by someone from X-Rite on some other forum, is that around the time they -- Pantone -- came out with the Plus colors, they changed the paper stock they printed the books on, and that caused the L*a*b* values of certain colors to shift a bit.
And the shifting definitely did happen. You can run through the old PMS and PMS + libraries in any application that will show you the L*a*b* values and see for yourself.
It's also true, as Tim says, that some software vendors, for reasons known only to themselves, seem to like to alter the L*a*b* numbers supplied by Pantone just a bit.
However, what I like to keep in mind is that a L*a*b* value for a Pantone color is only going to be an absolute if you're printing on exactly the same stock as the book was printed on. I also have found for many years that the best and overall easiest and most reliably accurate way to get a quick L*a*b* value for any Pantone color is just to get it out of the picker in Photoshop. And, of course, Photoshop doesn't even give you decimals.
So what I'd kind of keep in mind as you really wade into this stuff is that final reproduction and measuring are still mechanical processes, they'll never be absolute, and they're all developed to quantify a thing -- color -- that in the end doesn't even actually exist except in every viewer's individual perception.
In the end, it's what you see, not the Delta E. Or, having been at this a long time now, I've never seen a spectrophotometer write a check to pay for a job.
Mike Adams
Correct Color
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Tim-Ellis
Well-known member
Tim-Ellis
Well-known member
Hello Darioluca .... and Hello Breifeld,
I have been looking into this for a while on another forum. Today I got a phone call from a supplier I trust with an answer.
The LAB values you export into Adobe might be rounded up to the nearest decimal when you try to establish the values (see the screenshot)
If you want a precise value....
In Pantone Color Manager choose your Fan Deck.
FILE > SAVE AS
File type > choose Color Exchange Format 3 (CXF)
click SAVE.
You then export the entire deck as a CXF file which you can open in Text Edit, Notepad, Text Wrangler etc.
Name="PANTONE Yellow 012 U"
Id="CBFF036D-F019-4913-A2E6-BDB9AFBF10D0"
GUID="4C674330-3049-604F-C988-0F94C9880F94">
<cc:CreationDate>2017-06-23T17:16:12Z</cc:CreationDate>
<cc:ColorValues>
<cc:ColorSRGB ColorSpecification="CS0">
<cc:MaxRange>255</cc:MaxRange>
<cc:R>255</cc:R>
<cc:G>224</cc:G>
<cc:B>0</cc:B>
</cc:ColorSRGB>
<cc:ColorCIELab ColorSpecification="CS1">
<cc:L>90.83</cc:L>
<cc:A>3.06</cc:A>
<cc:B>93.52</cc:B>
</cc:ColorCIELab>
</cc:ColorValues>
</cc:Object>
<cc:Object ObjectType="Color"
I also believe the Pantone Phone App will show you accurate LAB values to two decimal places.
Hope that helps.
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