Important Information About Pantone® Colors in Photoshop 24.0 or Higher
Pantone® colors are the worldwide standard for color reference and for mixing ink colors for screen printing. If you do a set of normal “channel” separations in Photoshop you typically pick a color from the original artwork and assign that color to the proper separation channel. You then would click on the color and choose the Pantone Color Book of Pantone Spot Color to find the nearest Pantone match and the Pantone number. Easy.
When you view the separations on the monitor you can see how the seps will look when printed. But when you send the separations to the print shop you need some sort of reference so they can either find a close off-the-shelf color or they can mix the color using a Pantone ink mixing system.
In late 2022 Adobe started to slowly remove the Pantone Color Books over what appears to be a dispute between Pantone and Adobe.
Starting in Photoshop version 24.0 and higher – if you want to find the nearest Pantone match for the colors you pick for your design you can no longer simply have Photoshop tell you the color – because the Pantone Spot Color Color Books are gone. Here are three methods you now have to use:
- Have a Pantone Formula Color Guide physical book (available from Pantone for $220 HERE and compare the color on the monitor to the color in the book (very old school) to find the nearest Pantone Color number.
- Download and use the Pantone Connect Photoshop plug-in HERE and pay Pantone $15 per month.
- Load a third party Custom Pantone Swatch file HERE into your Photoshop Swatches panel.
No one is happy about these Adobe changes and as of this writing there is no other easy solution.
Learn more HERE at Adobe about this change. Order and download the Pantone Direct plug-in from Adobe Exchange HERE. (Note: there is now a Basic Free version of Pantone Connect but it does not have the functions needed for our purpose.)
Use a Physical Pantone Formula Guide book.
This method is pretty straight forward and may seem a little old school. But, for most average designs it works great. Simply hold the Pantone Formula Color Guide page with the closest color to the one on the monitor you are trying to match and find the number. Remember that monitors can vary and you will come close. Generally if the image is critical and from a large company they will often call out the Pantone colors they want.
Use Pantone Connect Photoshop Plug-in
Pantone Connect is a very confusing Photoshop plug-in. Download the Pantone Direct plug-in from the Adobe Exchange HERE. It is a plug-in that works in the Extensions Panel. Go to Window/Extensions and click on it. Dock it with your other Panels to save screen space. Pantone Connect has a monthly subscription cost of around $15 and a yearly cost of around $115 (as of this writing).
The directions with the program are very hard to follow and not intuitive to a color separation work flow for screen printing. It is not too hard to use if you follow our directions.
1-Open Pantone Connect panel. Click on Colors.
2-Click on Convert.
3-Click on HEX.
4-In your separations – click on the Channel you want to change. Click on
small square Color in Spot Channel Options. In Color Picker
select the new color. Highlight and copy the # at the bottom of that page (HEX number).
5-Paste the HEX number into the HEX box in Pantone Connect. Click Convert. Note the Best Match number.
6-Assign this number to the Channel Name in your separations.
Use a Third Party Custom Pantone Swatch
This is a good option. There are a number of custom third party Pantone Color Swatches for Photoshop that are pretty accurate. You can download one of them HERE. Copy the file to a location where you can find it. The file is archived and needs to be unzipped.
Here is how to install it in Photoshop.
- In Photoshop go to Window/Swatches and open the Swatch
- Click the menu icon in the top right corner of the Swatch
- Select Load Swatches.
- Locate the new custom swatch file and Open.
Unlike the official Pantone Color Books…… this Swatch will not automatically put the Pantone number into the channel. You will have to open the Swatch and compare the color in the artwork to the colors in the Swatch and choose the one you think is the closest. It will give you the Pantone number to put in the channel.
