In CS6, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe Photoshop include Pantone Plus Series® of color books. These colors are the latest PMS colors Pantone uses, and replace the earlier Pantone Matching System®. Pantone Plus modernizes the way spot colors from color book manufacturers are used in these applications.
Adobe Illustrator has three types of color swatches—process, global, and spot. Process and global color swatches are related to the document color mode. If you change the document color mode from CMYK to RGB, the process or global colors are converted. If you change it back again, it is a second conversion and not a return to the original color. Unlike process and global color swatches, spot color swatches preserve the definition and color modes (CMYK, RGB, LAB, Grayscale, HSB, or even WebSafe RGB) they are created in. Spot color swatches are of two types:
- Created by users
- Created by color book manufacturers such as Pantone, and TOYO
Color system manufacturers create standardized colors for communicating color information across applications and processes. These standardized color libraries are called color books.
The Pantone Plus Series® in CS6 includes ten libraries:
- four with global color swatches
- six with spot color swatches using Lab values.
The filename extension of these colors books is .acb.
Before CS2, the spot colors from Pantone and a few other systems had color definitions in CMYK. The CMYK values were whole numbers.
When Pantone Color Books were introduced in CS2, they had LAB definitions. The equivalent CMYK values were not always whole numbers.
The filename extension of these color books is .acbl.
In Adobe Illustrator, you add named color swatches, such as spot colors, to the document swatches. The same is true for spot colors from libraries or color books. The difference between color books, however, is that there are two definitions:
- from the color books that were introduced in CS2 (having Lab definitions)
- from older versions (having CMYK definitions).
To enable you to select the desired spot color definition, Illustrator CS6 includes a setting in the pop-up of the Swatches panel to make this choice. The setting is a document level property and is set in Document Profiles (also known as Startup Documents). In previous versions of Illustrator, the default was to use CMYK. However, with the introduction of Pantone Plus Series® in CS6, the default was modified to use Lab definitions for spot colors. There are no CMYK definitions for spot colors in the Pantone Plus Series®
There is no impact on workflows around global colors. For the various workflows for spot colors, below are some FAQs that further explain this update.
Is there a change in the process to add new spot colors from color books to the document?
No. There is no change in this process. To add a spot color to the document open the color book, and click the desired swatch.
Why does a certain spot color from Pantone Plus series in CS6 appear different from same spot color in CS5 and older versions?
In CS5 and earlier versions, which included the older versions of the Pantone color books, most spot colors from Pantone had two definitions - Lab and CMYK. In addition, the default setting of the Spot Options dialog was CMYK. CMYK values took priority over Lab values. The spot color added to the document usually came with CMYK values.
Workaround If it's necessary that the same spot colors are identical in CS5 (and earlier) and CS6, replace the Pantone Plus Series ® with the older Pantone color books. See Workaround 1 below. It's also necessary to change setting of the Spot Color dialog of the CS6 document to use CMYK values from the manufacturer's process books. These two steps make the Pantone spot color uniform across different versions of Illustrator. However, it could impact cross product workflows with InDesign and Photoshop, if you are using the new Pantone Plus Series ® with these applications.
Is there any impact on opening legacy ai/eps/pdf/indd files in Illustrator and InDesign CS6?
No. Files from earlier versions open fine. Definitions of spot colors are preserved along with their original definitions.
An exception to this behavior is opening legacy files that contain linked PSDs or TIFF files that have spot channels from older Pantone color books. More information about it is available below.
Importing PSDs and TIFF with spot channels having older Pantone colors
PSD and TIFF files that contain spot channels from color books retain a link to the color book. When place-linking such files in Illustrator CS6 or InDesign CS6 document, the color information for spot channels is searched in the installed Pantone Plus color books. If an identically named color is found in any of the available spot color books, it is fetched and linked to the file or opens the legacy file. (This process is also true for opening legacy ai/eps/pdf/Indd files that contain links to such PSDs or TIFFs.) In this process, there can be a slight difference in appearance of the color (compared to CS5 or earlier). There are two reasons for the difference of appearance:
- The setting for choosing CMYK vs LAB of the Spot Color options dialog is set differently
- Pantone has modified the definition of the color in Pantone Plus.
If the color used in spot channels is not found, Illustrator displays a warning and places the file with the spot color turning black. However, it retains the color as a spot color.
Workaround 1: Replacing Pantone Plus with older Pantone color books
Workaround 2: Making older Pantone libraries available for missing colors
With introduction of the Pantone Plus Series® in CS6, Illustrator, InDesign, and PhotoShop CS6 all contain the latest color libraries from Pantone. There is seamless exchange of book colors from one application to the other. And as the spot colors have Lab values, the visible results are much closer to the real inks available. Remember that CMYK, as a color mode, has a fairly limited gamut. Representing Pantone spot colors in CMYK numbers results in a wider difference between printed output and digital artwork. By moving to Lab value for spot colors, the difference of appearance between two viewing modes - Normal and Overprint Preview is also reduced considerably.
When workflows demand that Pantone colors with CMYK values, Adobe recommends that you use the Pantone Plus Series® global colors.
Workaround 1: Replace Pantone Plus with older Pantone color books
Adobe Illustrator CS6:
- Quit the application.
- From the folder Adobe Illustrator CS6/Presets/[Lang]/Swatches/Color Books/, remove all the libraries that have names starting with Pantone+
- Download the file Older_Pantone.zip and extract its contents. Extracted folder has two folders named ‘1’ and ‘2’.
- Place all the libraries of the folder named ‘1’ into:
Adobe Illustrator CS6/Presets/[Lang]/Swatches/Color Books - Place all the libraries of the folder named ‘2’ into:
Adobe Illustrator CS6/Presets/[Lang]/Swatches/Color Books/Legacy - Launch Illustrator, and open all the Document Profiles from:
- Mac OS: [user]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CS6/[lang]/New Document Profiles
- Windows 7: [drive]\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS6 Settings\[lang]\[binary]\New Document Profiles
- Windows XP: [drive]\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS6 Settings\[lang]\New Document Profiles
- For each Profile, change the Spot Color... option (Swatches panel > pop-up menu) to 'Use CMYK values from the manufacturer's process books'.
- Save and close all Document Profiles.
- Restart your application.
Adobe InDesign CS6:
- Quit the application
- From the folder Adobe InDesign CS6/Presets/Swatch Libraries/, remove all the libraries that have names starting with Pantone+
- Download the file Older_Pantone.zip and extract its contents. Extracted folder would have two folders named ‘1’ and ‘2’.
- Place all the libraries of the folder named ‘1’ into: Adobe InDesign CS6/Presets/Swatch Libraries/
- Place all the libraries of the folder named ‘2’ into: Adobe InDesign CS6/Presets/Swatch Libraries/Legacy/
- Restart your application.
Workaround 2: Making older Pantone libraries available for missing colors.
Use this workaround only when you encounter missing colors in legacy documents. It is not recommended to use older Pantone libraries to add new colors to a document.
Adobe Illustrator CS6:
- Quit the application.
- Download the file Traditional_Pantone.zip and extract it.
- Place the whole folder in Adobe Illustrator CS6/Presets/[Lang]/Swatches/Color Books/
- Restart your application.
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