How Pantone Is Still Turning Color into Money (2015)
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You mix "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer" here.
eh.... both on nontrivial tasks.
Two identical RGB monitors side by side will not match and even after being color matched using expensive tooling, they will not stay matched for long. Getting two monitors from two different manufacturers, or even different revisions of the same product, requires considerable effort.
On top of that the color space used by applications may not match, and may not be compatible with the monitors. I always enjoy the color match game of receiving a graphic from our art department because they rarely have their tooling set to the RGB colorspace when they produce their graphics. So depending on which browser you view the graphic in and on which platform you view it you'll end up with wildly different colors. Because some browsers take into account the monitor color profile and others don't, and Macs do a better job with color than Windows which does an infinitely better job with color than Linux (Android).
The way i tend to look at colors in a computer is as following as long as you use sRGB, LAB or possibly even CMYK then it is up to the OS to show that correctly.
In reality every device will have different background light, different settings, different manufacturing process and the list continues there is just no way all the parameters can be accounted for.
If you develop for the web or another multi platform environment you cant expect colors to be spectrally same from device to device. AS such you can not and should not develop applications that has that presumption.
Only in very specific controlled environments can one make the assumption that a color is what it is and not a representation.
So coloring in a computer is easy cause the rules of the "game" is defined. Show a specific sRGB color and that is what it is. If you have a bad screen that wont show that color that is not my problem.
BTW the "RGB colorspace" is not a specific thing it is an idea, dont ever refer to such a thing if you want to be productive.
BTW people often generalize terms to simplify concepts for the uninitiated.
"Historically, color management was not an initial design consideration of the X11 display system on which much of Linux graphics support rests, and thus color managed workflows have been somewhat more challenging to implement on Linux than under OS's such as Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X. This situation is now being progressively remedied, however it must be admitted that color management under Linux, while functional, has not yet acquired mature status. Although it is now possible to obtain a very consistent color management workflow under Linux, certain problems still remain" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_color_management
I'm reminded of the silly Comedy Central show Nathan For You (where a comedian provides outlandish business advice to actual small businesses) where Nathan found a flavoring company to uniquely design a poop flavored frozen yogurt as a publicity stunt.
I imagine an odoring business exists, but just isn't consumer facing, rather sells to brands we know, so we don't know who they are.
1. Say you want to print my Coca Cola posters in China. As a designer you could send them a swatch of paper with the right color OR I can just tell them the Pantone color.
2. Say you design something on your computer but you need to determine if you can actually print it. The software I worked on would let you compare the color gamut of various devices i.e. let you know if the item you designed could be printed/rendered on a certain printer or T-shirts.
Here is a good link that explains things a bit: http://www.printernational.org/rgb-versus-cmyk.php
I'm in the t-shirt printing business and this is a major issue with artwork that we print. Explaining to people that we can't print their RGB image with the exact colors in it is a major pain.
When you're taking bottles of ink off the shelf and mixing them, you just are not going to be able to represent all the colors in the RGB space.
This is not really true. They're different things. One is spot colour, one is process colour.
Process colour - lots of very small dots/splodges/lines made of just a few ink colours (typically Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black).
Spot colour - ink that is that colour.
There is no room for intepretation with spot colour. It is the colour it is.
Even CMYK can be a "different" colour. Different printers (both people and the machines) can print CMYK differently. It is possible to print CMYK without the K, for example. It's very difficult to see the difference and it saves a chunk of money on ink. The output is a different colour though. ;)
Pantone colors are such a system, with very exact control over what you get.
As for CMYK, there is a difference between spot and process colour. CMYK is process colour, made of lots of small spots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink. There are different ways you can do this and you will get different effects. For example you could have grids of dots, but you could have the grids at different angles.
Spot colour (pantone) is just ink that is that colour. You get exactly the same every time, no matter the printer.
In that scenario, what is the deliverable to the manufacturer or the printer as it pertains to a specific color? What specifications are they using to match against a defined pantone? Is it too a matter of matching against a swatch? That seems arduous at best!
I understand that the answer is a "no" and that I'm wrong. I just don't know why I'm wrong.
But if YOU have a pantone swatch and I have the same pantone swatch. We now have a reference that is the SAME color. I can tell you to keep adjusting your local parameters until the thing you're coloring (paper, fabric, plastic, rubber, metal) matches the swatch.
It's the same with printing, except that calibration is more effort and expense. Enter Pantone. Pantone inks are pre-mixed so the color is always consistent. What printers do is they print most of the image using the normal four-color process (CYMK) on a "best-effort" basis and then do a separate pass on critical areas using specific Pantone inks that are guaranteed to yield a specific color. The extra process is expensive so spot colors are typically limited to brand-specific colors (e.g. Coca-Cola Red) and other things where precise color reproduction is important.
No, not at all. Pantone seems arduous because you're unaware of all the simplifying assumptions that you're otherwise making.
Your perception of a color for a single illumination stimulus is indeed a simple three-dimensional quantity (as your eyes have three color channels). But the stimulus itself is defined by an intensity at every wavelength.
For an extreme example, something that fluoresces takes in say UV light and outputs lower wavelengths. I think the Pantone model simplifies away things like fluorescence as well [0], but I've thrown out the example to show how many dimensions we're actually dealing with.
For a purely diffuse example, first take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cones_SMJ2_E.svg . To my approximate reading, 530nm and 575nm have equivalent responses for your "green" color receptors. If we have one material that does not bounce 530nm and one that does not bounce 575nm, they can look the same if illuminated with equal amounts of each [1] but then look different if illuminated with a "same colored" source that is lacking 530nm. This is why people have problems with fluorescent and LED lights - colors look weird because their emissions are "peaky" and not the smooth "black body" curve we're used to.
[0] Although maybe not, with the prevalence of whiter-than-white papers, laundry detergents, etc.
[1] With each material having the appropriate amount of red/blue bounce to equalize those channels as well.
Accurate colour reproduction, that enables you to get half a dozen things made in different parts of the world then put them next to one another and have them look the same, is a really tricky process control problem.
(One of the historical reasons Apple were popular with designers is that they do care about colour accuracy and things made on a Mac will generally look the same on other Macs unless you've fiddled with the calibration yourself. PC OEMs and Microsoft don't care about this.)
A real color is a mixture of reflected wavelengths and more, for example a fluorescent marker is that, fluorescent, you give it UV light and you get green.
A real color in real life behaves different depending on the light that illuminates it, and the angle of incidence.
RGB and CMYK is display-specific primary inks dependent. There are spaces for device independence colors. They work well for cinema and places were illumination is controlled and restricted.
Pantone let you control a color over a broad range of circumstances on the real world, like color of a shirt at the sunset.
It looks like the stupidest of things, but a client buys you a suit that looks great at the shop but bad on his house or office illumination and he will ask for a refund.
The same thing with a big poster on a building on London weather(totally different than on Madrid or Rome).
Light entering the eye can be thought of as having a range of wavelengths over the visible spectrum. A red source of light might be pure red, with a single wavelength right at the peak sensitivity for the red cone receptor of the human eye, but it might also be, and in most cases will be, a mixture of wavelengths some stronger some weaker falling across the visible spectrum that happen to stimulate the red cones more than the blue or green cones.
Visible light, made up of a collection of wavelengths, can be described as an intensity curve for each wavelength, that is, a real valued intensity function of wavelength. However, the brain is incapable of knowing the shape of this curve, it only knows how much each of the three types of cones are being stimulated. Two very different "colors" having wildly different distribution of wavelengths might be perceived as exactly the same by the human eye. Furthermore, the brain does a bunch of processing that changes the perceived color in strange ways, see for example, the Land effect [2], named after E. H. Land (creator of Polaroid cameras) because of his work on understanding it.
Finally, why isn't RGB enough? Each Pantone color, say Pantone Coated Warm Red C, does have an exact RGB (or CMYK) value, in this case #F9423A. The problem is that pigments in inks and pixels in cameras and the pixels in screens all generate or are sensitive to specific sets of wavelengths that won't exactly correspond with each other or with the sensitivity of human eyes. This is why we need color profiles and color spaces and all of the concomitant complications (especially so since the functions involved are not simple linear transforms).
A sophisticated enough sensing device could be constructed to exactly mimic the sensitivity of the human eye. It could report the apparent color of any object, say a fabric swatch, in three dimensions, say R, G, and B. Such a device could be used to compare a color in China with on in New York. It's just more convenient to use the ubiquitous color swatch strips produced by Pantone and match the colors by eye, and by now, one can simply load your offset printing press with ink matching Pantone Coated Warm Red C straight from the ink manufacturer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_sensitivity
[2] http://www.millenuvole.org/f/Fotografia/Per-quali-ragioni-ve...
In other words, the eye as a light sensor to match a color in the physical world is the most efficient solution we have, no?
I'm no designer but it seems like Pantone created a solution then convinced everyone else there was a problem.
Similarly, it's possible to say "these printed things and signs are different colours", but only with a reference can you say which one is the wrong colour, authoritively enough to complain to whoever forgot to colour-correct their part of the process.
And of course a brand has to pick a Pantone colour in the first place, for which they will want a reference book.
I realize it's an off-topic nitpick, but that's not actually true. You take the average of all watches, and this will be your best guess for what time it really is. So having two watches really is better than just one, and three watches provides no guarantee of perfect accuracy.
This only holds under additional assumptions, as for example that the errors of the watches are independent and normally distributed. In general this is not a good idea.
You're going to make assumptions whatever way you do it, e.g. using confirmation (two watches indicating the same time) to indicate truth assumes that error is fairly rare (out of 3 watches only 1 will be wrong at any given time) and that it's discontinuous rather than a smooth drift over time. No assumptions, no conclusions.
Main point: more watches is always better, and three is not a magic number.
Also a good press operator will at times use the PMS to mix existing colors in their inventory to closely match the target color. Ideally you would use the exact ink, but this isn't always possible given the tight constraints of running a commercial print business.
Pantone were around long before design went digital, starting as a method for printers to systematise the production of coloured inks, and the Pantone system is still the way printers manage and talk about colour. Pantone only moved into the digital space fairly recently with the advent of DTP.
Colour management for print is complex - colours appear very differently when printed on different paper stocks, especially coated or uncoated paper. And it's almost impossible to get an accurate preview until you're on the press itself - when it's way too late to make changes. Having the Pantone books which show what the colours look like on different stocks at the start of a project is enormously helpful.
Also CMYK print has a much narrower colour gamut compared to RGB - greens and oranges are especially hard to reproduce - so it's not unusual to specify extra colours where colour accuracy and vibrancy is important - such as on a logo. These colours will be Pantones, and often specified to the printer with a torn-out colour chip.
High-end printing is done using the Hexachrome process, which adds orange and green to the standard CMYK. This gives a much wider colour gamut - and is developed by Pantone.
It's a shame it's not an open standard.
http://www.pantone.com/graphics/pantone-matching-system?from...
You have different books for "Matte" and "Glossy" and also one for "Fabrics".
For businesses, accurate color reproduction is essential for brand recognition, brand perception, and reputation. IBM's blue and T-Mobile magenta are pretty iconic. It would look pretty silly if you had a meeting with IBM and the business cards you got handed all had a different shade of blue and none of them match the letterhead on the meeting agenda the provided. Or you walked into a T-Mobile store and the magenta on the walls didn't match the placards, the floor, the employee uniforms, nametags, or the sign hanging in the window.
There are color calibration devices, like the color scanner in the paint section at Home Depot, that are used to calibrate monitors, printers, and everything else but they're useless without a reference point to calibrate to. That's where Pantone comes in. Pantone produces a standard catalog of colors that people can reference. Additionally they license the catalog to software and hardware manufacturers for color matching purposes.
When you take a Pantone color swatch and pull out a color, open Photoshop and paint a swatch of that color and print on an Epson Pantone printer and an HP Pantone printer, those prints are going to match the swatch from Pantone.
Pantone sells consistency.
All devices have different ranges of color they can reproduce and nothing can produce the full CIE colorspace. Even if we possessed a device with that capability, we lack the ability to describe all possible colors to that device. AdobeRGB and sRGB are subsets of CIE and computer monitor makers struggle to make professional grade monitors that can cover 90%-100% of those gamut ranges.
The Pantone system is constrained further by just being a subset of colors exist within a limited gamut range. Pantone colors are only ones that can be produced by the mixing of, I think, 14 base colors. Their system sets clear limits on the scope of the problem and provides clear and consistent reference points.