what PANTONE / PMS color guide to use?

Many specialty materials, such as fabrics or flex face canvas for canopies or awnings, often have their own specific swatch books. It's no different than swatch books for brands of different kinds of colored roll vinyl to run through a vinyl cutter/plotter. At best, Pantone swatch books are really only a common intermediary reference to ballpark those colors. If you have a really picky customer it's usually best to show that client an actual swatch of the colored material rather than say it looks like a certain Pantone spot color.

Most corporate brands will use Pantone spot colors as a reference for official logo colors. Most will default to the coated book. I rarely ever see anyone spec uncoated spot colors. What gets tricky is when a company does a brand re-fresh and uses newly added Pantone colors. Some graphics applications, such as Adobe Illustrator, may not have spot color swatches updated to include those new colors. Subway Restaurants' latest brand update is an example of a company doing that. Adobe's solution is making users buy Pantone's color manager software for $99. Supposedly if you have a new swatch book you're supposed to get the software for free. But you're S.O.L. if the swatches you bought didn't include any freaking serial numbers. Corel has been pretty good at updating its swatch books in CorelDRAW, but you have to avoid the default Pantone swatch book and bring up the Pantone+ V3 books to get at the newer colors.

 

to answer your question uncoated

 

This depends a lot on your printers and intended print materials.
If your printer prints with spot color inks then you will need a Pantone swatch book only. If your printer uses CMYK inks then you will need a Color Bridge book showing the difference (bridge) between TRUE spot color formulated inks versus the closest a CMYK printer can emulate those specific inks.
The next option is "coated" versus "uncoated" which comes down to what type of material you are going to be running. Coated (glossy) materials allow the ink to ride on top of the material whereas uncoated (matte) materials allow the ink to sink into the material.
Honestly, the best first step is to have someone profile your printer correctly (at least 1 good profile for gloss and one good profile for matte) and be sure you are using the best profile for the materials you are running. Then, you have to ensure you are using the correct color profiles on your local design stations in each of your design programs. AND that whenever you get a file from outside your office that their art is also set up in the correct colorspace.
After that, your individual printer can print out a Pantone swatch sheet on different materials to see where you fall compared to the Pantone color book you purchase.

 

Attached is a file of Pantone color swatches. Please open this file with your graphics application, select all, and copy and paste into a new document in your software. Save the new document as your own Pantone test file. Otherwise, you will be looking at colors generated by my software.
Print this document onto some of your various materials ans keep these charts around your office.

Protip: Brand these with your logo & phone #. Print extras on the ends of your rolls with the waste material and give these free color charts to your sales people to give to their customers.

 

https://www.pantone.com/products/graphics/color-bridge-coated-uncoated

 

Do you think what you're suggesting here could be an infringement of Pantone's copyright policy?
https://www.pantone.com/color-intelligence/articles/technical/color-identification-and-control

 

No, not what you are asking, but what jfiscus is suggesting as far as Pantone charts.

 

It is a color bridge out of your specific printer. It was provided to us when we purchased a version of a RIP. It says "Simulations of PMS colors" along the top.
The fine print at the bottom states it cannot be sold or misrepresented as a genuine Pantone certified product. This was given out with the intention to be used for this purpose, in 2004.

 

We give out the specific charts for our printers to our color conscious customers to help them select the best spot color from what our printer actually prints.
For instance we had a customer recently specify the use of Pantone 460. 460 Prints a MUCH flatter non vibrant color off of our printer, so we showed them our chart and instructed them to use 602 instead for a nice muted yellow on their project. They agreed and everyone was happy with the outcome. Even a genuine Color Bridge cannot accurately represent what every make and model and ink combo and profile on each printer can achieve, especially once you get into more than just CMYK inks.

 

1) But your Pantone 460 did not simulate the PMS as the chart is titled and that's one reason why Pantone attempts it's copyright protection. The incorrect color creates confusion and stresses the brand as faulty.

2) At first glance the chart appears to be branded as Pantone, regardless of the fine print disclaimer which anyone could have placed there just as the line with the late version of Illustrator CC 2018 was placed on the chart that is already 15 years old. Pantone itself does not publish such charts.

3) On the bottom is says it's to be used with Onyx workflow products. Onyx has had a license to do so because because they've satisfied Pantone's technical requirements (and fees.) However, the intention was for the printer to use the chart as an in-house guide from which to evaluate and fine tune their own machines to better match actual Pantone swatches. The original intent was was not to hand out erroneous colors on an all-inclusive chart as it often has.

I happen to know how and why you're using the chart but so many others do not. Misuse of the system is one reason Pantone has it's policy.

 

I really want to complain about the cheap feel of my new Pantone chart and how crappy the "spot" colors are printed... for $200 this thing is lame

 

Technically you just did. Bet you bought it off Amazon without reading reviews, probably a Chinese knockoff. Amazon is almost Ebay 2.0 now

 

And you bet correctly. The first one I bought from Amazon (and it showed the seller was "PANTONE") and read the reviews. It also had a registration number. I returned it thinking it was a knockoff and second one I bought right from Pantone.com and it was the same exact quality.

 

Wish I could help. I'm just glad that I'm not a replicator and have to worry about this stuff.

 

Send in a pantone chart for your wholesaler to print on your next order. Then you can match right to their output if that's your goal. There's one floating around here.

 

We use the Pantone Bridge Set. Both versions come in handy depending on your material needs.