I Have to Pirate COLOURS Now??

[Emily Young]

Pantone recently decided that their expensive plastic chips and colour matching binders were not making enough money. Now, even old files will stop working if you don’t pay up.

 

 

[emosun]

I always like sitting back and just watching the chaos and inevitable issues that come with having things you rely on being controlled by the companies that manufactured them via the internet long after you already paid for said thing. Like it's a huge surprise that always online software is a bad idea or something. nobody saw this coming. lol

 

[corrado33]

ARRRRRRRRRRR ye maties. I see yee be discussin' piracy again with corporations hornswagglin' ye hard earned booty. 

[Lightwreather]

Forgive me but,

It appears Pantone hath finally shown forth their true colours.

[poochyena]

timestamp 6:55 isn't true. Adobe photoshop elements is a one time purchase. Not a subscription.

[sub68]

4 minutes ago, poochyena said:

timestamp 6:55 isn't true. Adobe photoshop elements is a one time purchase. Not a subscription.

Yes.. but its elements, it stripped down for a averge user those not really good for advanced amateur and up.

[sub68]

I am still happy I have this.

[Marcus70]

Absolutely insane. So if I understand it correctly, colors used potentially last in the late 90's in a file are now gone?  So if LTT needed to simply reprint a file that say somhow the pdf version was lost or needed to send out the vector art to a product manufacturer; that file now is lacking the colors?  So, if you created the file while Pantone colors were licensed, that license wasn't perpetual even if the file is never modified again?  Seems like they could have only taken the colors out if you wanted to modify the file and save a new copy. 

[corrado33]

This is another case of "corporations doing whatever the F*** they want even though literally every single one of their users hates it because that corporation has a monopoly."

 

Games did it what.... 10 years ago by going all online? And every gamer everywhere hated it? Now apps too!

 

Piracy is here to stay. F*** that noise. 

 

The funny thing is.... apps are much more apt to piracy. They don't need to have connections to servers to function properly. Take, for example, online games. You can't REALLY play them without connecting to the server. You can 100% still use photoshop offline without access to the internet (or with a connection to a fake server). You don't lose anything super important. (Yeah you lose access to online libraries and what not but in a lot of cases I'm pretty sure you can download them manually and have them local on your computer.)  Where as with an online game you lose MOST of the game by keeping it offline and away from official servers. 

[bluehawk]

As someone that does IT support for college, I am not looking forward to hearing from the graphic design class about this 

[Charis]

Maybe a stupid question from a person who really has no idea about design (and has never heard of pantone before):

I am from Germany and so far have only heard about RAL colors.
It looks like that those companies do pretty much the same thing.

 

From what I was able to find online, RAL supports 2540 colors by today.
Maybe it's worth considering switching the "color provider", rather than paying a mothly fee.

[dogwitch]

41 minutes ago, bluehawk said:

As someone that does IT support for college, I am not looking forward to hearing from the graphic design class about this 

sorry imagine a cat i.t support for college. made mu laugh hard

[oiaohm]

Pantone and other gallery spot colour has been a nightmare for those opening PSD files without adobe.    Its not just gimp in open source software that opens PSD files you have those using krita and others.   Lets say someone opens a PSD file to look at something with Mac OS Preview and you have used Pantone guess what everywhere that was a Pantone colour would always turn black.   Issue is PSD file has not been recording fall back RGB/cmyk values instead the fall back value is 0, 0, 0 RGB.

 

Next is a good one the same RGB/cmyk value may have more than one Pantone colour.

 

Lets look at how Pantone thinks your workflow should work.  

1) you computer create something using RGB/cymk

2) you take the RGB/cymk value get a list of Pantone colours.

3) you personally look at those chips decide what Pantone you want.

4) you return to the software and set the Pantone name.

Notice something you follow the Pantone workflow the file should have RGB/cymk value and the Pantone code.    I am sorry to say Pantone idea of how workflow should work is not how those created branded product want it to work.       Branded products want to pick the Pantone code to set the RGB/CYMK on screen and have those values in file to be ideal.

 

Lets look at how adobe has done it.

1) select Pantone colour

2)  Pantone colour gets stored in file.

3) to display on screen Pantone colour has to look up

 

There is a problem here.   Only people with pantone will be able to view this file and that is the people with adobe with PSD in most cases.    If had manually create a spot colour in adobe following the Pantone recommend workflow your would have had RGB or CYMK value as well.   Not having adobe means person sitting on a mac os or something with just a viewer.    Ask if a product looks somewhere near right its a lot more cost effective if a no cost viewer will work than needing everyone to have adobe.

 

Think about this you would need less Pantone connect licenses if the fallback value is included in the PSD and if you had ways of using your own list of spot colours.

Pantone with adobe has not only been out of date with what is included.

[Vishera]

2 hours ago, sub68 said:

I am still happy I have this.

-snip-

Good thing i am still using Photoshop CS3

[Vishera]

1 hour ago, Charis said:

Maybe a stupid question from a person who really has no idea about design (and has never heard of pantone before):

I am from Germany and so far have only heard about RAL colors.
It looks like that those companies do pretty much the same thing.

 

From what I was able to find online, RAL supports 2540 colors by today.
Maybe it's worth considering switching the "color provider", rather than paying a mothly fee.

RAL is only popular in the EU,

Pretty much no one uses it outside the EU.

 

So you will end up using colors that no one uses in the region you are it - And it won't work well for you.

[Thaldor]

I still say the same that I said in the last topic about this. I believe it is the time we really separate physical and digital colors. In digital editing we start to use approximation colors that are and can be referred to Pantone colors in physical world and as said, you don't even see the exactly, completely identical color of the physical Pantone color even on the most perfectly calibrated screen, so switching it over to something that isn't but without superhuman color separation skill is completely unnoticably different from the Pantone color doesn't change a thing. In physical world you still need to get the books and whatever and use them to check what color you actually want.

 

As I also said making scripts to replace every Pantone color in digital files with approximations is pretty much simplest importing script there is, just take the color, look for a match in library, if match change the colors value bit or two and user won't even notice it isn't the exact Pantone color on the screen. To make it more usable we do want to keep track of those changed colors so when they are copied, used, changed and whatever we still know what color the user is really wanting but we are not working with Pantone colors, so a special color palette which doesn't even refer to the Pantone colors but keeps all the transformed colors and their transformation differences (as in were the value changed 1 bit up or down) in the memory so when the user wants to know the color we can tell them a bit offset color value from the one showing on the screen. And then finally when anything is exported from the program or saved we undo every and any changes to the color values so the saved file, file send to printer, exported piece of the file, just anything we take out of the software will have the real colors user meant and not our approximations so we can move the problem of using Pantone colors to the next software.

 

And for the purists. Yes, I know you want to see the exact right Pantone color on your screen and work with it because it brings so much joy and convenience to your life. But really, does it matter if your screen doesn't show the perfect Pantone Yellow 012 C #FFD700 but the websafe CSS Gold #FFCC00 which have clear difference but are closest approximation from those palettes or we just use Whatever Yellow #FFD600 which is one bit away from Pantone 012 C and we can argue that within computer those are two completely different colors?

Also that your [brand removed] screen is calibrated at the factory and the calibration is stored and binned for that exact screen doesn't mean anything because the calibration should use the exact lighting level of the screen and the exact lighting of the place that screen is used to be even 99% there and I don't think you are working in the room in China where the [brand removed] screens are being calibrated and even then you probably would be just around 99.9% the real Pantone color showing on your screen for your extra sensitive eyes.

[ThatMooooCow]

1 hour ago, Charis said:

Maybe a stupid question from a person who really has no idea about design (and has never heard of pantone before):

I am from Germany and so far have only heard about RAL colors.
It looks like that those companies do pretty much the same thing.

 

From what I was able to find online, RAL supports 2540 colors by today.
Maybe it's worth considering switching the "color provider", rather than paying a mothly fee.

If that was easy people would done it years ago, but the problem is, that colors are used to ensure that you'll get same color you want on an actual product, and the person that makes product for you has to know what color to use, and if they don't have books or other stuff from your "color provider" they can't really know if that was the color you wanted. You can't just make everyone switch "color provider" too, if you get my point.

[Krowyn]

Can someone explain to me why we need Pantone? Are there not other free standards like HEX and RGB colour codes we can use instead? Like HEX colour codes are the same no matter the display or paper... right?

[Rex Hite]

46 minutes ago, Krowyn said:

Can someone explain to me why we need Pantone? Are there not other free standards like HEX and RGB colour codes we can use instead? Like HEX colour codes are the same no matter the display or paper... right?

This Pantone issue is only of concern to those who must use a Pantone specification in a job. 

It's of no consequence for those who use Adobe Creative Cloud products for photography or really any job that doesn't specify the use of Pantone Spot Colours. I agree with Linus in the video that this is an annoyance to a certain class of Adobe user and not the end of the world.

[GOTSpectrum]

https://www.opensourcealternative.to/

 

Is all I have to say

[Thaldor]

2 hours ago, Krowyn said:

Can someone explain to me why we need Pantone? Are there not other free standards like HEX and RGB colour codes we can use instead? Like HEX colour codes are the same no matter the display or paper... right?

Firstly hex color is just to more compactly represented RGB color. As in RGB color has values from 0-255 per color and those are translated into hexadecimals from 00-FF so instead of calling perfect white 255 red, 255 green and 255 blue we can call it #FFFFFF.

 

Because RGB is basicly just the color, not the paint. Yes, paint has a color that can be given RGB value (most often CMYK value in printing with the difference being CMYK being developed for old ink printers that printed 1-100% sized blobs of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (most often black) ink) but paint has way more things than just the color because paint isn't just a color, it's a mixture of pigment chemicals, solvent and other additives. If you go to a paint store and want #FFFFFF paint, the clerk will start to ask you a lot of questions from intended use (do you water, oil or other solvent based paint, like you won't be painting a car with water based paint), what kind if surface you want (gloss, semi-gloss, matte, opaque, texturized and so on) and probably what else you want from the paint (metallic with small particles of shiny metal in the paint, pearlescent paint with ceramic crystals in it, magnetic paint, chalkboard paint and so on and on).

Now comes the reference color palettes like Pantone and RAL to the picture. The paint manufacturer has already made their own paint catalogue based on the Pantone/RAL colors they can make with the chemicals and resources they have so the customer can either choose a paint from their catalogue and they can just punch it in and the paint is done or the customer can tell a Pantone/RAL color and style of a paint they want and the manufacturer already knows whether or not they can make it and if not what in their catalogue is close to what the customer wants or they can try to make that color happen. Pantone is more used in manufacturing while RAL is more used in paints and coatings (as in while you can get something like aluminum anodisation in Pantone color X, the anodizer more likely is to already know RAL color Y because RAL is more often used in coatings).

[papajo]

(as far as software as a service goes) I still have a grudge with MS for suddenly closing all the Age of Empires Online servers without at least releasing a server version so that people can keep playing the game at their own expense. 

[garethsnaim]

Nothing has happened on my end yet but presumably the blacked out colours, we will be able to establish what they were in pantone terms or RGB or what ever, i.e. I am not going to open a file and have no way to determine what the colour used to be?

 

[Kisai]

15 hours ago, poochyena said:

timestamp 6:55 isn't true. Adobe photoshop elements is a one time purchase. Not a subscription.

Photoshop Elements is a different product entirely. 

 

An Analogy is saying "Just use MS Paint and MS Movie Maker instead of Creative Cloud", Sure... you can, but it's a garbage experience, with none of the features people actually buy photoshop for. 

 

Basically Davinci Resolve is replacing Premiere and Final Cut in video production work because CC is an extreme pain to install or even make work on Windows, and always has been, and the Mac has Final Cut if you want a competent product that is only available on the Mac. If you work in Mac and Windows, your only choice now is Davinci.

 

Photoshop however, there are a dozen alternatives, with most "artists" having deviced Clip Studio Paint is the least annoying commerical software that does everything better than photoshop anyway. But only if you're producing paintings, comics and manga. If you're doing photo touchups, you are pretty much stuck with Photoshop, but even an old version of photoshop is suitable to scan, crop and color correct. Photoshop Elements basically the "MS Paint" version of Photoshop where it's geared to making a photo library, not a actually working on the photos in a professional manner. You won't find any pantone support in it because it's not intended to be used on anything that isn't a cameraphone photo.

 

 

[oiaohm]

6 hours ago, Sakuriru said:

I typed in pantone and nothing came up.

This good question what are the alternatives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_chart#Color_selection_charts

• "DIC Color System Guide" and "Toyo Color Finder," commonly used for spot color matching, mostly in Japan^[4]
• NCS Palette (Natural Color System)
• Pantone, used for printing and sometimes for paint, fabric, and plastics
• RAL (Reichsausschuß für Lieferbedingungen) "Classic", "Effect", and "Design," used for varnish and powder coating

 

Yes this is the 4 most common  majors around the world.     DIC, Pantone and RAL you do have physical reference models.    But then there are a stack of minors.  Then  Dulux as example of a minor yes most paint companies have their own colour standards.   Like Dulux Lexicon® Half that is  R: =237  G=: 239 B=: 238 by Dulux colour mixing machine guess what there is no Pantone colour that exactly matches..

 

Interior design turns into a pure nightmare at times because paints, carpets, light fittings.... all can be using different colour systems.

 

So welcome to another issue.    Adobe system only allowed setting one spot colour.    You might want to to set a spot colour in DIC, Pantone, RAL, Dulux....

 

At times people notice that their products they have ordered that are powder coated and they have used a Pantone code number instead have end up with nearest RAL.   Why the RAL stuff was nicely premixed and getting Pantone is going to take custom mixing.

I am sorry that Linus from LTT here showed his limit of understand of the problem.  Adobe way of handling spot colours like it or not has been wrong.     Yes means to set spot colour with multi values is a feature Adobe tools have missed.  Not putting RGB/CMYK...(what ever format the file is) fall back data in the file is another problem.

 

The reality is colour matching is a mess.   Real world sample items exist because computer monitor cannot reproduce how a produced colour will behave in the real world.

 

The reality is globally there are a few thousand to a few million alternatives to Pantone.   The catch is most of the alternatives are like only a particular brand of paint or only a particular brand of fabric or only a particular brand of carpet....   Yes those companies are not going to pay to use Pantone.

 

Yes a person producing products in japan like LTT does might have a full DIC setup.    A fashion designer may be using a particular fabric manufactures colours again those colour can be like the dulux one not matching Pantone.

 

Shock horror to a lot working in Pantone wondering why they order something in fabric and they are getting sent 2-3 samples to choose from.   What happened here the maker does not have Pantone fabric or thread in that colour so instead makes up the item using the nearest match they can find in some manufactures samples.   There can be a very big problem here.   You could be choosing the most expensive to make fabric with the most limited supply.   Now having the fabric supplies spot colours you self you at times can find 3 to 4 manufactures making the same colour fabric under 4 different names.      But doing this equal more work.