Thread #463640
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How does "Pantone +CMYK" work?
Is it actually Pantones? the swatches appear as CMYK,
if i send a file using a swatch of "Pantone P 179-1" are they going to spot print that color? or what?
goddamn pantone never making any sense.
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>>463640
Pantone is a company that literally just sells swatches - they have well defined colors and you can buy these swatches anywhere in the world. If order something in a specific pantone color from china, the manufacturer can buy a pantone swatch book, find the color, match it perfectly and send it to you. Is it waaaaaaaaaaay overpriced? Yes.
It's basically a proprietary, for profit standard that everybody seems to have adopted.
It's not smart, but designers seldom are
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>>463699
well pantone provides color mixing instructions too
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>>463640
Pantone CMYK is the Pantone guide for a close, and sometimes 'close-ish' match between the Pantone spot color (which is made of mixed ink according to the Pantone formula given on the swatch guide) and the CMYK four-color process (which is made solely from the blending of different levels of cyan, magenta, yellow and key [black].
Because of its limitations, CMYK cannot accurately match all Pantone spot colors. When Pantone still had Hexachrome, it's expanded 6-color set could quite accurately match something like 90+% of Pantone colors, but that was abandoned some years ago, sadly.
If you are designing for screen reproduction, however, you can safely use the normal Pantone colors. For print, if the color MUST match, you might need to suggest CMYK + spot color printing (requiring either a 5+ color press, or more than one run through a 4-color press).