...which is also what you get by using an RGB / CMYK approximation and then telling the manufacturer which kind of paint should be used for that layer (by specifying a Pantone color). What this $15 subscription is for is technically just that set of mappings built-in into Photoshop.
> ...which is also what you get by using an RGB / CMYK approximation and then telling the manufacturer which kind of paint should be used for that layer.
That’s not going to work, because the natures of the different surface will make a given RGB/CMYK perceptually differ.
Think display calibration, except a lot worse.
The point of the Pantone system is that they’ve done the legwork to get perceptual matchings across surfaces, and design paint mix recipes to achieve reproducible matching. That’s what you’re paying for.
It seems like people are misunderstanding the approach here.
Let's say I want to print something in Pantone 123 (careful, Fluke might go after me!) I send over a design artifact that uses the color #ffc72b. Now, when it comes time for printing, the printer can't print RGB, but I also specify the mapping "#ffc72b is actually Pantone 123".
The printer _uses Pantone 123_. We don't suffer any loss of color fidelity. We only use RGB/CMYK as stand-ins for the correct color.
Note there are millions (24-bit) or billions (32-bit, but I mean, you can use however many bits you want) of RGB/CMYKs and only thousands of Pantones. This mapping doesn't need to be lossy.
Yes, yes, yes, #ffc72b is not Pantone 123. But it _is_ if I say "map everything to the closest Pantone color."
Even better - you don't have to worry about it being "lossy" or not as you don't just map specific RGB color to Pantone; you're mapping whole color layers, so your layer is displayed in #ffc72b on screen, but you're telling the printer that this particular layer is supposed to come out as Pantone 123. This is the exact same thing that happens when you select Pantone 123 in Photoshop after paying for the subscription, except the "telling the printer" part is embedded in PSD file in that case.
I added the part in brackets afterwards to prevent further misunderstanding, but it doesn't change the meaning of the post, which was just to move the actual color definition out-of-band.
I have a terrible tendency to hit the send button too soon and then update the post multiple times with typo fixes and clarifications...
It changes the meaning massively. The original was just "pick a CMYK colour and then tell them what kind of paint you want it printed with", the latter is "pick a CMYK colour and then tell them what it actually need to look like".
"What kind of paint you want it printed with" assumed that it's already after matching it to whatever Pantone definition you're after given the materials/conditions/printing method etc., otherwise you're quite obviously not going to get the result you want.
This. So much this. The Pantone system covers displays, materials of all types, paper of all types, and fabrics. The same Pantone color will look exactly the same on all those materials. That's why it's the standard and not just for graphic artists, but also for manufacturing, fashion, and other industries I'm probably not even aware of.
It’s not really, you wouldn’t choose these colors from RGB/CMYK you’d use a sample book. It’s more the tool within PS to tell the printers easily which pantones you want to use.
You could of course not subscribe and communicate that manually, but I bet that’s frustrating if you’re an agency working on many brands not a in-house team.
$15 a month is a heavy subscription for the convenience though.
> It’s more the tool within PS to tell the printers easily which pantones you want to use.
That's exactly what I said above. It's nothing more than a label with a mapping. The actual matching to whatever is defined by Pantone happens during printing/manufacturing, not in Photoshop.
And then you'd probably not get what you expect since your CMYK printer isn't calibrated like the print shop's printer is, despite having the same kind of paint.
