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Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

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Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#31

I wonder why they don't just charge more for the dyes (or the dye licenses, I think they are not making them themselves). I think it is bizarre that you should need a license to write down in a file "use this-and-that tube of color for printing this shape". If anything, they should be paying Adobe for including their colors. Maybe this is a possible evolution? Third party ink producers create photoshop add-ins allowi…

I used to work as a GD professionally, Pantones/spot colours are incredibly important in the industry. Process printing (usually CMYK) is great, but often just not accurate enough, and I really doubt Coca Cola or whoever else would be too pleased with you swapping out their pantone colour for an alternative.

Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So they’re just wanting a cut. A cut that is actually larger than the price of Photoshop, which is $10 / month.

Yes, but Pantone colours is more specialised software and its price shouldn’t be compared to that of software for a wide audience. If you really need Pantone colours, it’s an expense easily worth it. I understand the outcry but TBH I think it’s a bit exaggerated. That being said I‘m also not sure whether it’s really worth it for Pantone to charge for their digital stuff. I can’t imagine it being a huge part of their…

> Yes, but Pantone colours is more specialised software

Pantone has nothing to do with software.

The "software" here is a mapping of color names to hex. It's literally a text file.

Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I recall, its about phyiscal to virtual color matching, so pantone offers samples of say plastic with the exact matching color as the virtual ones, so you can pick a color, tell the manufacturer you want the plastic molded that color and be pretty sure you'll get the right color of product (or if not you can go back to them and tell them to do it according to spec). You'd also want to calibrate your monitor…

Of course at that point you're already bought into the ecosystem with physical samples (which are not cheap), monitor calibration and all, so it feels like a "double dip" for no value added

It's not really a double dip. It's more like a triple dip, as they charge the designers for the physical samples, then they charge the designers in order to reference those physical samples in their Photoshop designs, and then they charge the printers in order to produce the output that the Photoshop files are referencing.

Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#34

Photoshop already is a rather expensive subscription so whoever doesn't mind paying Adobe obviously uses it for making good money on regular basis and shouldn't have a problem paying Pantone as well.

"Has no choice but to pay for it" != "doesn't mind paying for it."

Lots of graphic designers, "employed" as contractors, have to pay for photoshop.

One of the reasons Adobe moved to this "cloud" shit is because lot of large companies tended to delay upgrading for quite some time...not because they couldn't afford it, but because most of their bargain-basement labor force couldn't.

Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#35

I wonder why they don't just charge more for the dyes (or the dye licenses, I think they are not making them themselves). I think it is bizarre that you should need a license to write down in a file "use this-and-that tube of color for printing this shape". If anything, they should be paying Adobe for including their colors. Maybe this is a possible evolution? Third party ink producers create photoshop add-ins allowi…

They charge designers $X000 for a book or a set of paint chips with swatches of all the colors, so I assume they are trying to continue that revenue stream in a subscription-based way.

You can find knockoff of very good quality for a few bucks. I think they can control it better through Adobe licensing.

Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#36
post #14

Quoted post unavailable.

It’s normally a good idea to understand something you are criticising. Pantone do not ‘claim’ colours. They provide exact colour mixes for a variety of differing substrates and materials that guarantees exact replication. For that vast majority of brands, publishers and manufacturers, this is very important and worth paying for.

Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#37
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just the rgb value. Using a specific Pantone color ensures that when you get it printed or manufactured it’s the color that you expect.

...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.

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.

Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#38
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just the rgb value. Using a specific Pantone color ensures that when you get it printed or manufactured it’s the color that you expect.

...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.

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.

Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#39
post #6
post #2

Photoshop is subscription too now right? So they’re just wanting a cut. It’s almost a funny way to indirectly protest the move to subscription everything.

And they also have some of the absolute garbage software surrounding it. It's bananas for a company the size of Adobe to have such bad software.

No one at the top cares about the creative tools part of the company whatsoever. They only bought Macromedia because Flash was the video player of the web. Think they all just care more about corporate PDF integrations than any of their creative tools.

All the dev team talent left or was outsourced and the only changes that seem to be able to ship consistently is web view based welcome screens.

Re: Adobe no longer licenses Pantone colors to be used freely Photoshop

#40
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course at that point you're already bought into the ecosystem with physical samples (which are not cheap), monitor calibration and all, so it feels like a "double dip" for no value added

It's not really a double dip. It's more like a triple dip, as they charge the designers for the physical samples, then they charge the designers in order to reference those physical samples in their Photoshop designs, and then they charge the printers in order to produce the output that the Photoshop files are referencing.

So… they charge people for using their cross-referencing system is what you mean?

It’s no more triple dipping than two people each needing their copy of photoshop to work on the same psd.

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