Hex or RGB to Pantone

[Albacore]

Yes there is and yes Pantone might be the way to do it or maybe not. Why not just print it out and see, it's just colour, it's the method that you choose is different. Print not hard thing to do, you design, you print, you look. Easy, but things get in the road. Xara is the first, you look in RGB but you print in CMYK/Pantone and they don't match. So what do you do, well print it seems the natural thing to do. Well what type of printer and how many am I printing? Well I could do it myself but I have got to have a CMYK printer. Well that's easy I just spend over £100 and I have a CMYK printer which I can modify any Xara doc. colour to suit and the price of 1 full printed sheet might cost up to 35 pence. Well all of that seems easy, "I am not trying to be rude here! it is old fashion advice" all I have to do is get a hold of a print to see what it looks like, easy. Then we have to decide who is going to print it. Me on a desktop laser---- local digital printer------ printshop which uses negs or film where I have to pay for the set up plus the printing. I know what my clients want so it's my choice! 85% of the time it is going to be the local digital print shop which is cheap and here their easy to talk to because there local, terrific, let's get going! Honestly folk worry themselves too much about printing, it's just a process, it's just hoops that you have got to jump through. Maybe I have been lucky I have had only one bad experience with a printshop and that was just a boring old fart, that thought he was better than most and had more knowledge than most. Well "f_ck him" and I moved on.

Look Rik, plunge in, it's not hard, after the first 40 (joke, joke......) go for it. Don't read too much, just put your practical hat on, just think about the to colour process, RGB and CMYK, use Acro Reader or better still buy yourself and old copy Acro Pro, use it, as it is bar far the best tool. Only buy it if you think you might do this again if not just use the Reader it's OK. But get a wet copy of your design it's only going to cost you £1 at the most, look at it and make your changes, simple!

[JET]

Up to this point, all I've ever done is to design something on the screen....But, now I need to get things printed from a printer shop. Some advice I've had is that I will need to supply Pantone Colours and/or CMYK values.

When designing for print, don't think so much in terms of "color." Think in terms of inks. Printing is a very physical/mechanical real-world endeavor, and much of it boils down to practical common sense.

One of the first things you need to consider when designing for print is how many inks will be used to print the job. You should make that decision up-front.

First, Pantone is just a company. It's a company which began in the printing industry long ago (long before graphics computers), and which developed a scheme for mixing a set of its own specifically-colored inks (spot colors) from a smaller set of actual ink pigments. It publishes its formulae for mixing the smaller set of "base" inks in order to achieve the larger set of mixed inks with reasonable consistency. Then, for use as selection references, it published printed swatch books which were actually printed using those inks. It's all proprietary. Yes, it's widely used, but it's not some kind of universal scientific colorimetrc rule of nature.

The original concept was simple: Assuming print shops A and B both buy their inks, X and Y, from Pantone, and assuming they use the same published proportions to mix up a third ink, Z, then the results from print shop A and print shop B should be the same color, even though they are different print jobs, run on different presses for different customers in different locations.

But that all assumes spot color; a term which means you're going to load the actual desired color of ink (Z) into the press.

So basically, you only need to worry about "Pantone" if you are actually going to print using spot color inks; in other words, you are going to actually load the press with the color(s) of ink you want to be the end result. Think of the ubiqutous US politician's calling cards and signs. They're almost always red, white, and blue. The paper is white, so you can print the job by loading a red spot color ink and a blue spot color ink into a press which has only two print heads. Use the same brand and color of inks, and you can print half of the cards in California and the other half in Georgia and they will be (within reason) the same color.

But that's only practical for up to a few inks. A printing press only has a few inkwells into which to load ink. You can't load an infinite number of different-colored inks into a press in order to print, say, an ordinary full-color photograph of the same politician's toothy grin. That's where process color comes in.

You resort to printing with a set of four "primary colors" of inks in such a way that when overprinting each other, they visually blend together to simulate a broad range of colors which can reasonably represent all the colors in the photo. If you're project is going to be printed using this "four color process," you don't really need to concern yourself with "Pantone" at all.

So later, predictably, the desire arose for being able to reasonably simulate a particular Pantone spot color ink when printing using four color process. So Pantone began publishing its "official" recommendations for CMYK mixes which approximate the colors of its spot color inks. Again, all this predates computers. When graphics computers became commonplace, Pantone began publishing software versions of its ink color references. And since then, many digital designers insist on using Pantone swatches as their primary reference, even when designing for media (signage, for one example) which don't even have colors corresponding to Pantone's.

If designing for four color process, there's nothing that says you have to refer to Pantone's proprietary colors at all. If you want "red" well, you just can't get any more "red" in CMYK than 100% Magenta, 100% Yellow. But I guarantee you that will fall far short of the intense "redness" of the Mustang I had occasion to rent on a particular trip to San Diego.

Does that mean it's impossible to print a suitable photo of that Mustang? Nope. That's where color correction comes into play as opposed to mere color calibration. Color correction throws the spectrophotometer out the window, takes into account the undeniable and unavoidable limitations of CMYK four color process, and intelligently exploits the perceptual and contextual adaptiveness of human vision to make a CMYK print more convincingly suggest the brilliance of that Mustang. And that's where continous study, observation, and experience comes into play.

OK. It seems that I need to buy some swatches.

Maybe. Maybe not. (At least, maybe not right this minute.) Again, it depends on what exactly you're needing to print, and despite the length of this thread you really haven't yet shared one bit of information about that.

Not all printing is as all-fired color-critical as a national ad campaign or sales brochure for a very red Ford Mustang. In fact, truth be told, most isn't. And color-calibration, while not the highest ideal panacea which many of its devotees mistake it to be, is also not completely valueless. Device manufacturers and software publishers have gone to great calibration lengths for decades to at least keep you in the colorimetric ballpark by default.

Most projects for which beginners in print are likely to be hired are probably not in the realm of table-top glitzo color-critical. If the project you're working on is, for example, being commissioned by National Geographic, you should say so now. Otherwise, while getting your feet wet in ink-on-paper, you will probably come out just fine even committing the "unspeakable travesty" of sending an RGB PDF for automatic in-RIP converstion to CMYK for offset print.

But if you do that, just don't come on to the printing house like a super-sensitive artistic savant complaining about the lack of "brilliance" or "punch" or "good humor" or any other atsy-tartsy ill-defined term. Trust the printing professionals to take care of you. Seek opportunities to visit (or even work in) the press room. Read, study, gain experience.

And yes, when you can, buy a Pantone swatch book. You'll probably need several. And while you're at it, a PostScript process swatch book.

And don't be afraid to do some methodical experimentation of your own. For example, when you print the next process color project, place a few squares of incremented CMYK values in the waste area of the press sheet to test what you consider "the best" match for a particular spot color ink that will be used in the next upcoming project.

That kind of thing can accellerate your learning. It's not difficult (especially in digital print-on-demand environments) to justify printing a sheet or two of your own color swatches just to zero in on the best process specs for a particular customer's spot-colors.

Then is it a case of trying to see which colour closely matches what I'm looking at on my screen?

Never trust what you see on your screen. Yes, go to reasonable lengths to have a reasonably well calibrated screen. But always take what your screen shows with a health grain of salt. Don't believe me? For just one kind of consideration, do the following:

Turn off your monitor. Do it now.

What color is it? About 80% gray?

Now I ask you: Even with all the color-calibration you can muster, what's the darkest black your monitor can display?

See what I mean?

So sure, you want your monitor to look reasonably like print; not bluish, not yellowish. You want your several graphics apps to display colors with reasonable similarity. But when it all comes down to it, if you're ever going to be serious about this stuff you have to learn to fly by the numbers, not just the appearance of your monitor.

Example: An enterprising young illustrator sits in his mood-enhancing darkend room and does absolutely killer graphics which he hopes to someday see published in the game industry. He sends one of his stunning works to have a one-off poster printed for his portfolio. And when it comes back, it is utterly flat and featureless in the all-important shadow areas. That's just one kind of the ugly surprises in store for you if you don't seek to understand print-centric CMYK values.

I just thought that there might a conversion, of one type to another?!

As you've seen already in this thread, "conversions" abound....

To be able to give exact colour names/numbers.

...but the operative word here--and the falacy--is "exact." Not when substituting RGB for CMYK. And even when you achieve it (as many claim by using Lab as the intermediary color space) hair-splitting colorimetric calibration is not really the most important consideration for good color.

And not what the eye may be able to match or not.

You've got to develop a "mind's eye" for actual ink-on-paper, not just for glowing backlit LCDs.

JET

[Rik]

...
Maybe. Maybe not. (At least, maybe not right this minute.) Again, it depends on what exactly you're needing to print, and despite the length of this thread you really haven't yet shared one bit of information about that.
...
JET

I wish I could really express my thanks for the time you're taking to explain things.

And I have shared information... In Post #5.
The hex colours you can reproduce in Xara.
As for the CMYK values in that post, I've already mentioned that they do not seem to match PhotoShop values. I have asked which I should trust?

Never having had to do this, I am trying to find out what I may need to know.

OK. I will need to find out what material it's going to be printed on.

[JET]

Rik,

You've said you've designed a logo, you've shown four RGB colors, and said you need four matching Pantone colors.

But you haven't shown the logo or the document (brochure, ad, trade show poster, ...) that you need to include it in, or stated the printing environment (traditonal sheet-fed offset, digital composite, one-off large format printer, screen printing, flexography...).

This is why I'm saying you haven't really provided enough information about what you're doing. Here's the thought process:

Knowing only that we're talking about a "logo" the first question is, why would you want to require four spot color inks? That's not very practical. Surely you don't intend to require your customer to pay for a four spot-color press setup every time he needs to print his logo?

Usually, a proper logo should be unique, recognizable, elegant and as repro-versatile as it can practically be. It should not require four inks. If it requires four colors for its uniqueness or recognition, the designer should ask himself if he is using color as a crutch for an otherwise weak design.

A logo is the business's signature; its visual cornerstone; its identity mark. It has to be used everywhere, from extreme reductions to extreme enlargements in all kinds of media. What is the customer supposed to do when the logo needs to be printed in a single-color or two-color newspaper ad or on an invoice? Will it work for engraving on a ball point pen or an award plaque? Or embroidered on a golf shirt?

Confining the discussion to just print, if you're going to require four colors in a logo, and if those colors are ordinary colors like the red, green, cyan, and gray you've shown, why would you not simply print it with four process inks instead of requiring four spot inks? You're going to be hard pressed to find a printing house which dedicates a four-head press to custom combinations of four spot inks.

Suppose the customer needs a full-color brochure. If there's a compelling reason to require one spot color, or even two, six-head sheetfed presses are not uncommon which can accommodate that. But I don't see anything among the four RGB colors you've shown that suggest anything compelling like that.

Maybe, for example, there's something special about the cyan you've indicated. Cyan is notoriously the "weakest link" of CMYK. But you haven't shown the artwork, so that's just a guess.

So for the moment I have to just forget spot color. I don't see any reason for it in the colors you've indicated. So let's talk CMYK. You've got four RGB colors: red, green, a slightly lightish cyan, and a very dark gray.

There are both repro-practical and aesthetic reasons to use solids (100%) in identity graphics. First, it makes it possible to render the graphic as line art (avoiding the need for halftoning in repro methods like screen printing, or in small reductions where dots work against sharpness). Second, remember: When you look at your monitor, all you see are "solids." Your monitor doesn't render halftone dots even in regions where they will be requred for four color process printing. Screened inks just don't have the strength of solids. The very fact that they are screens of dots on a white paper "washes them out."

So are there any compelling reasons among the particular colors you've indicated to accept the disadvantages of tint screens in order to achieve a closer match? I really don't see any. Let's look at them one at a time:

The red is just a very slightly orangish red. In CMYK, the only way you get that is to make Y stronger than the M; so you have to tint the M. But how much? Is a "dead ringer" really worth making the red a bit more drab just to make it lean so very slightly toward orange? No? Okay. Just make it 100M, 100K.

The green-apple green will similarly have two CMYK components, this time Cyan and yellow. Just as in the case of orange, a solid Y will give it more brilliance than a tinted Y. The green you've chosen will require the C to be tinted to come reasonably close. Probably about 80% C. So this again raises the question of how important that particular green really is in the particular artwork which hasn't been shown? Will the design really suffer if it goes darker in order to print the C component as a solid? How much of the design uses that green? Which of the other colors does it directly contact?

The slightly light cyan is simple. C being the poorest component of CMYK, in order to stay "clean" it has to stay just C. Add any of the other components, and it either quickly shifts green/aqua (in the case of adding Y), or it goes muddy ( in the case of adding M). You've tried to specify a clean, bright "sky blue"--exactly the color which CMYK is very poor at producing. Again; your monitor glows. Process ink on paper doesn't; and cyan "glows" the least of the three. So if this color plays a particularly important role in the graphic, this is the only one for which I might see justification for a spot color. Failing that, you have two choices: either let it wash out to try to simulate the lightness of the RGB, or maintain what little intensity C offers by printing it solid, and therefore just slightly darker.

That leaves the gray. That's a very dark gray. Why? Do you want it to read as gray, or do you want it to read as a weak black, as if the ink wasn't printed well? There's a principle of design that says to make your design intentions look intentional, so they don't look like mistakes. Either make that gray lighter so it clearly reads as intentionally gray, or let it go solid black and thereby heighten the perceived brilliance of the other three colors by contrast. If it must be gray, not black, then it will have to involve tints anyway, unless you can live with the particular gray which solids of C, M, and Y yield. In that case, you can still maintain line art throughout and save yourself an ink, to boot.

Finally, how do the colors interact? Are any of them going to contact each other in the design? If so, which ones. Why? Because if they do, you're going to need to consider trapping. This will likely be less problematic if, for example, the cyan abuts the green than if it abuts the red, since the green and the cyan already share a significant component, C.

So you see how this works? Especially in the case of things like logo design, it's not a simple matter of drawing something that you decide "looks good" and then sweating blood to try to precisely replicate all of the RGB colors you happened to use in it with CMYK inks. Rather, it's a process of working out the practicalities of reproduction in concert with the design decisions toward a robustly successful solution. Hair-splitting RGB-to-CMYK colorimetrics-to-two-decimal-places is seldom the top priority.

JET

[Albacore]

Jet that really good interaction with Rik good information provided from both a design perspective and printers viewpoint but I still think he is not believing you. He is more worried about the process and the fact that Xara values don't match PS's that's why I was chasing him just to get it printed. Goodness me the satisfaction I got to see my first work going through a press was a big high for me but that was after much altering of colours looking at wet copies from a laser. It was a printer that gave me your info on clean colours and stay clear of the over use of transparencies. Think also the newer print machines and better software at printers allow designs and colour usage to be more refined.

[ber61]

Rik something I have learned from following this post is your question about PhotoShop and Xara numbers not matching is the CMYK numbers are in percents in PhotoShop and if you use percents in Xara they will almost match perfectly. The RGB colors must be 0 -255 and the CMYK must be in percent on the options for them to match.
I was shocked after reading this and I did a simple test and exported 3 colors to a PDF. In both Adobe and Xara color #2a2a2a when reopened into either program reads Black. Hope the file was saved right and I am not adding confusion from my test.

[ankhor]

Well, if you get a swatch book, also get a female to look at it, why? See here ;o)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...rent-ways.html

[Gamerprinter]

In my experience, if you're doing graphics work with a big company (as your customer) that has been around for a couple decades or so - picking the right Pantone colors matter. However, I've only ever worked for medium to small companies, and almost never doing work intended for printing to web-press, usually dealing with digital print work. So in 30+ years of working with the graphics industry, I've not had a single requirement to use Pantone colors ever - and that's after 20 years running my own shop, and 10 years before that at 3 different printing companies (one of them was a major web press company, now owned by R.R. Donnelly).

I know there is work and customers that require Pantone specifics in their designed graphics, it's just I've never encountered it. I do possess, a couple Pantone color selection swatch books, even though I've never used them.