Pantone colors in Photoshop

[PeterB]

Hi everyone,

I'm a Pantone newbie, so be gentle. I'm doing a design for which I've been told they use Pantone/PMS colors... the design I've got is in CMYK. Is there any easy way to convert the entire image to Pantone?

TiA

[$tevie]

When you say image, do you mean a photo? Because you can't print a photo using PMS colors, or rather I suppose you could but you are going to get some sort of Andy Warhol thingie.

[PeterB]

$tevie, I mean something I've designed myself, e.g., like a logo.

Reading a bit about it, I do understand that you can't "convert" from CMYK to Pantone, I'm just not understanding where the printer is getting his color palette from ... for example, one shade of green he is saying I should be using is PMS 361C. When I click on the color I have in CMYK, and hit "Custom" (I'm using Photoshop CS), the closest match I get is 339U (or if I look for a color with a "C" suffix, then 7473C is a pretty good match). Do I simply replace the color that's in my design with the 339U and send it back to him?

[Blankity Blank]

There is no 'click a button/choose a menu option' method for converting an image created using CMYK to Pantone colors; there aren't even exact equivalents for all Pantone and CMYK colors. If you want to use Pantone colors in Photoshop you'll need to bone up on "spot channels".

Pantone colors are not a color space per se, like CMYK, they are a set* of colors used for printing that have specific formulas for being mixed by printers (Human printers who use printing presses, not "printers" as in the device). The idea being that they will look exactly the same regardless of who prints them. Though, like most things, there are still variables that can separate the real world from the perfection of theory.

Unless you have a well calibrated system, you'll need a Pantone swatch book to accurately judge Pantone colors. Judging them on screen is a really bad idea; it pretty much defeats the purpose of using Pantone colors. In this case, the "C" and the "U" prefixes you see and hear being referenced indicate how the color in question will look when printed on coated, "C", versus uncoated, "U", papers. The difference can be very noticeable.

Pantone versus CMYK is a common choke point between printers and "designers". Knowing when and how to use which can save yourself or your client a ton of money; and that can multiply like crazy when you're talking about something like a logo that's going to be reproduced over and over and over again. Getting your chops on Pantone/spot colors (Pantone's the most widely used system in the U.S., but not the only one out there.) is one of those non-aesthetic things (and there are a ton of other subjects like it) that really does separate the professional designers from the rest of the pack.



*Setss actually. There are different sets of Pantone colors for different purposes, i.e. how Pantone colors will look when reproduced on coated paper, how they'll look on uncoated paper, or even Pantone colors used for metals or plastics. But usually you'll only be referring to one set of PMS (Pantone Matching System) colors at a time.

[Mike Johnson]

361 C is a solid coated color & should be in one of your color libraries.

Reduce your logo back to black and white.
In your Channels window, add a new Spot Channel. Pick 361 C or whatever is close for that channel. Then copy whatever graphic you need from whatever channel it's in and paste it into the spot channel.

The print guy will be outputting black and white separations and then printing them in whatever colors the job calls for. Good communication is key. You should be able to give him a b&w file or proof and say, print it in 361 C -- even if what you're handing him says something different.

It gets tricky when you're mixing spot colors or spot + back. But get that spot channel set up and it will start to make sense.

[Mr Downtown]

I encounter the converse of this situation all too frequently.

High-priced designer:

"We want you to use Pantone 391 for the landmarks on the map."

Me: "But I thought this was printing in CMYK."

Designer: "Yes, what's your point?"

[weapon]

Mr Downtown wrote:
I encounter the converse of this situation all too frequently.

High-priced designer:

"We want you to use Pantone 391 for the landmarks on the map."

Me: "But I thought this was printing in CMYK."

Designer: "Yes, what's your point?"

The High-priced designer is just asking you to do 4c + 1. On a 6-color press, this is a standard request. What kind of press are you using?

[Mike V]

I convert colours from CMYK to Pantone and back all the time using Photoshop's colour picker.

Sure you can check it with a swatch book, but Photoshop generally gets this right.

Although I remember in earlier versions of Photoshop it was buggy.
At one stage there was a coding error in Photoshop and it was using the values from sRGB to pick the closest Pantone colour even if an image was aRGB, or something similar.

Yeah, a spot colour or two on top of CMYK is done all the time down here.