Pantone, what is the deal?

[gwpriester]

How long did it take to chisel out the stone for the prints Sorry could not resist.

I get no respect.

I think most corporations and companies that have specific colors still specify color in Pantone and the CMYK equivalent. However CMYK can only match a percentages of all the Pantone spot colors, I think it is something like half can be matched exactly, and about 25% come close and the remaining 25% are not very close at all.

Back in the days when we pulled our stone prints, I wrote a book Looking Good in Color in which I tried to explain all of this.

[RKissane]

I would of though that CMYK would be a much higher percentage in matching Pantone colors. Learn something new all the time. Thanks Gary for the information.

Ray

[Acorn]

I would of though that CMYK would be a much higher percentage in matching Pantone colors. Learn something new all the time. Thanks Gary for the information.
Ray

Ray, I found this nugget on-line - "Most of the Pantone colours don’t have an exact CMYK match either, which is understandable considering Pantone uses 14 inks and CMYK only four."
A number of printer can handle extended gamut printing which is CMYK plus green, orange & violet ==> CMYKOGV.
Apparently this covers 92% of Pantone's PMS. This is why so many cheaper supermarkets own brands are precisely colour matched to the leading brands. Seven inks versus 1100+ spot colours so a print can readily batch multiple jobs, saving ink, time and frustration.

The Epson SureColor P9000 Violet Spectro inkjet uses 10 inks for 99% Pantone matching.
If only I had a spare £7k!

Just been playing with https://www.printkick.com/tools/image-colour-match and Xara's Palette from Photo to pass the time.

Acorn

[Grafix Smelter]

I guess for you pro's, swatches are still needed. Pantone use to do a free online colour picker but it is now behind a pay wall with a "free" trial option.
Their old version is still listed on the Internet Archive :- https://web.archive.org/web/20230000...m/color-finder