Adobe CC pantone colors

[The Vector Doctor]

Are there any workarounds to the pantone adobe issue? Tried to assign a pantone color to an object but can confirm it no longer works in 2023. I knew this was coming. There is a misleading mention of loading the pantone connect extension to allow you to use Pantone colors in your design. Registered at the site but found out it requires a $90 per year subscription to add/use the swatches in Illustrator and Photoshop

 

[gnubler]

I'm dealing with this also and loathing having to pay Pantone for the "privilege". I knew it was coming too.
All my swatchbooks are now useless...been doing a Pantone to RGB value conversion on some jobs. Stupid.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Does anyone know if Corel has this limitation? If not that seems odd. Why would corel be exempt?

 

[Dan360]

Get Pantone Swatches

www.ericforest.ca

So far so good with these

 

[Bobby H]

Rival applications to Illustrator, such as CorelDRAW or Affinity Designer, are not affected by this Pantone color books issue (at least not yet anyway). Maybe Pantone sees Corel and Serif as "little fish" too insignificant to reel in, unlike Adobe.

There is a work-around for Illustrator and InDesign. Install a previous version from the Creative Cloud panel. Then go to the appropriate folder(s) where the Pantone color swatches are stored and make back-up copies of those ACB files. Paste copies of those files into the appropriate folders of the updated Adobe applications. I made back-up copies of all those ACB files as soon as I heard about the Pantone fiasco months ago.

Some people in the Adobe Community Forums have mentioned seeing other sites online sharing these color book files.

There are two drawbacks with pasting copies of the "old" ACB files into the color books folder of the current version of Illustrator. You'll still see "this document contains Pantone colors" warning when opening a file with Pantone spot colors applied to objects. Second drawback: you're not going to see any new colors Pantone adds to its library. Anyone paying the $180 per year fee for Pantone's "connect" service that applies new spot colors in their artwork and shares the file with you will have problems.

That latter problem is what really makes this Pantone thing such a very stupid mess. There is a chance Pantone will be forced to reverse course on this ploy to generate more revenue. They're going to goof up graphics work flows all over the place. Clearly this idea was dreamed up by some new bean-counter at Pantone. They obviously did not think this issue through.

There are LOTS of complaints over how buggy and poorly designed the Pantone connect software is. And it's really only designed to interface with Adobe's applications. If Pantone wanted to go after Corel or Serif how would its software generate new color books for those applications? Better yet, how would it generate new color books for industry specific software, like our large format RIP applications?

Adobe has caught a lot of flak over this issue, but Pantone is 100% the culprit on this one. It's not enough they're getting close to $200 for a pair of printed swatch books in a Color Formula Guide. They want another $180 per year for digital versions of those colors. In trying to squeeze everyone they may just see a lot of people shift from specifying Pantone fills in branding and other work and just go with other models like RGB or L*a*b instead.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Get Pantone Swatches

www.ericforest.ca

So far so good with these

I will give that a try. I did see something about acb files but did not yet take the time to look for the correct ones. I could not find those old ones on my computer. I probably use pantones 1-2x per month so there is very little reason to pay that fee. $8-15 month on top of the $20 per month for Illustrator seems crazy.

 

[Tim de Beir]

I have copies of all the Pantone swatches, can I dropload them somewhere?

 

[SlikGRFX]

As mentioned, you can copy the Color Books from the Presets>Swatches folder of a previous installation into the Ai 2023 Swatches folder.

In the end I signed up to Pantone Connect because there are hundreds of new colours missing from the old Pantone color books. Those haven't been updated in years and I welcome a solution that keeps the swatch books updated, but the pricing is insane.

My biggest issue is the Pantone Connect interface in Illustrator. The window is huge, almost double the width of the other panels. Fine on a 27" screen but a complete pita when working an a MacBook. There is no reason for it to be so large and it only displays 2 PMS colours side by side on it's smallest setting. Also the process of choosing a color and applying it to your document is a complete joke.

As with the old swatch panel, you can search for a PMS code, then you just click the swatch to apply the spot colour to your artwork right? Wrong! If you click the swatch, it applies the CMYK equivalent to your artwork. To apply the PMS color, first you have to click in the corner, add to the document swatches, then find and click the color in the document swatch panel (another swatch panel that takes up screen space). So what was a 3 second process, now takes 15-20 seconds.

They also need to fix the order it displays the PMS colours. For example, if you search '425', it displays 425 C at the bottom of the list, so you have to scroll down past every other PMS color that begins with 425 (4250, 4251, 4252 etc.) before you get to the colour you actually searched for. That adds another 10 seconds to what was previously a simple process.

Overall in terms of usability its a huge step backwards. I really hope they spend some of the extortionate subscription fee to develop the plugin properly.

 

[DrunknMonk]

mine work ok in version 23 on a Mac

 

[Krissy Louderback]

My swatch book shows the CMYK and RGB values of each color.

 

[brdesign]

I was able to copy the pantone libraries from an old install of CS6, and just paste them in the folder for Illustrator 2023. This works but you don't get any of new pantone colors. The last update deleted all the pantone files from the 2022 folder but didn't touch the CS6 folder, for now. I've made extra backup copies just in case, but I'll probably end up paying the ransom fee to unlock the newest Pantone colors at some point.

 

[brdesign]

My swatch book shows the CMYK and RGB values of each color. View attachment 163704

You can create your spot colors in illustrator using the cmyk values, although LAB values would be better, and give the spot color the correct pantone name so your RIP software will recognize it as a pantone color

 

[Mike Brice]

This may or may not work. And it may or may not be technically legal, but... I have a Pantone Solid Coated-V4 .acb file. This forum won't allow me to upload directly to this post so let me know if I can get this to you somehow.

 

[mim]

We saved the Adobe pantone color book file before they switched, we just put it back in the folder after the update. We will probably have to do this for every update.

This may or may not work. And it may or may not be technically legal, but... I have a Pantone Solid Coated-V4 .acb file. This forum won't allow me to upload directly to this post so let me know if I can get this to you somehow.

^looks like he did the same so I'd definitely ask him for that file.

 

[Bobby H]

I was able to copy the pantone libraries from an old install of CS6, and just paste them in the folder for Illustrator 2023.

The ACB files from the CS6 release are pretty old (2012). They're missing a lot of the "Plus Series" color additions from recent years. I don't know how old/new the Pantone swatches are from the ericforest.ca website link in Post #4 above. It might be good to compare them.

With an application like Adobe Illustrator the Creative Cloud panel keeps all the previous builds of the current version available and all the builds of the prior version. In this case, all of the version 27 and version 26 builds can be downloaded. Any of the V26 builds will have the most recent ACB files.

In the end I signed up to Pantone Connect because there are hundreds of new colours missing from the old Pantone color books. Those haven't been updated in years and I welcome a solution that keeps the swatch books updated, but the pricing is insane.

Pantone was fibbing big time when they claimed Adobe hadn't updated its Pantone ACB files in over 10 years. Bull$#1t. I've worked on a number of projects that referenced "plus series" colors released more recently. The colors didn't show up immediately in Illustrator or InDesign but they later appeared in subsequent updates. If Pantone wanted to say the ACB files in Adobe applications are 3 or 4 years old that might be easier to believe.

$180 per year just to have access to "virtual" digital color palettes is pretty outrageous. I wouldn't mind the fee if that included a free physical copy of a Color Formula Guide. But, no. Pantone wants the money for those physical swatch books AND digital swatches. Big time double-dip. The price for Astute Graphics' huge arsenal of Illustrator plugins went up to $149 per year, which stings. Those plugins are actually pretty handy. And those plugins amount to far more features and functions than a mere spot color swatch book.

The bigger problem is all the work-flow compatibility issues this is going to cause. I think only a small minority of users are going to be willing to sign up for a Pantone Connect subscription. That's going to create plenty of issues between people just sharing Adobe-generated AI, PDF and EPS files. Does Pantone Connect work with other graphics applications? Does it work with other industry specific applications, like various brands of large format RIP software?

Pantone bit off a lot more than it can chew with this stunt. There will be consequences.

 

[JBurton]

Second drawback: you're not going to see any new colors Pantone adds to its library

Oh no! What will we do without the color of the year!?! I get what you're saying, for sure, but I've always thought it was the dumbest thing when pantone would release 'new' colors. B*tch please, you did not invent periwinkle, you just branded it.

Clearly this idea was dreamed up by some new bean-counter at Pantone.

I doubt this. I'm sure this has been in the works for years after seeing everybody and their mama convert their products to SaaS. No clue why corel isn't being bitten by this, other than +90% of design work is done in adobe, corel is tiny.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

mine work ok in version 23 on a Mac

27 is the most current version so unless you allow auto updates you should be good

 

[Bobby H]

I doubt this. I'm sure this has been in the works for years after seeing everybody and their mama convert their products to SaaS.

I'm willing to bet good money a bean-counting suit at Pantone dreamed up this scheme. There is no way it could have been pitched by a person actually involved in graphics production.

In just about any professional graphics work-flow people will be using multiple types of software from multiple companies. It's impossible for us to do all our work within Adobe's applications. That's one big reason why this "Connect" subscription thing is so freaking stupid. Someone that actually did graphics work would be aware of that fact. The inspiration of this scheme had to come from a person whose job is tinkering with spread sheets and making sales-oriented phone calls.

 

[BluetailGFX]

I just opened the ONYX sample PANTONE PDF image that comes with the software install. This then showed all the pantones in the Ai swatches palette. I then deleted any other odd swatches that were in the palette, then saved the palette as the User Defined.

Now when I need pantones I just open up the User Defined Pantone C swatch palette in the color libraries.

 

[dypinc]

I just opened the ONYX sample PANTONE PDF image that comes with the software install. This then showed all the pantones in the Ai swatches palette. I then deleted any other odd swatches that were in the palette, then saved the palette as the User Defined.

Now when I need pantones I just open up the User Defined Pantone C swatch palette in the color libraries.

Some RIPs allow you to export a Color Library that Adobe software can import. Check to see if Onyx will allow you to do that.