ELI5: what are Pantone colours and how can they charge you for them?

Submitted by jambo5600 t3_yhr58l in explainlikeimfive

I admittedly don’t use photoshop or anything of the sort and I’ve only first heard of Pantone in the last day or so.

I’m seeing that they’ve put up a paywall for their colours, but I cant understand how they have a business model which is based around licensing colours? What is their business model, why are they charging for colours, why is it significant?

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0000GKP t1_iufc3qj wrote

Pantone colors aren't just generic colors like red, yellow, or blue. They are very specific and standardized, which makes them useful in color dependent professions like graphic design or interior design. As a commercial architecture an interiors photographer, I have specifically asked my clients for their colors to ensure that the pictures I deliver to them are a perfect match.

The colors can be licensed because they are someone's intellectual property. In fact, they were already being licensed to Adobe by Pantone, but Pantone got upset because Adobe wasn't keeping these very specific colors up to date in their software.

Here's an article from the popular photography website PetaPixel about the issue:

https://petapixel.com/2022/10/28/you-have-to-pay-a-subscription-to-use-pantone-colors-in-photoshop-now/

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FriedMule t1_iufbgtm wrote

Pantone color is just a standard, but it is a standard where you know if you select P244 is it the same color, no matter the machine or surface. Only change is if you want blank or mat.

I do not know why some would take money for it, but you should easily be able to find for free countless places.

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mlcarter_ga t1_iufx2ng wrote

Years ago, Pantone sold a physical set of cards, much like the cards for paint colors you see at Home Depot. Same idea: If you called out a specific Pantone color (by its number), you were sure of an exact color match. We built retrofit displays for aircraft cockpits. Often our display would sit side-by-side with the competitor's display we were replacing, so the colors of any symbol on our display had to be a darn good match with theirs, or the customer wouldn't accept it. We'd get a competitor's display, keep trying cards till it looked like a good match, then specify colors (by its number) to our software engineers.

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jensjoy t1_iufkcfx wrote

Sry that's not an explanation but what paywall did they put up?
Pantone only makes sense in print, on screen you can only get a close estimate of what the color will look like and rgb to pantone converters are all around.

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WilliamMinorsWords t1_iufl4i4 wrote

This just happened recently. Adobe and Pantone decided that if you open a file, no matter how old, that contains a PMS color, it will show as black unless you pay a monthly subscription for it to show. Last I heard, it's like $21/month per color.

It doesn't matter if you're just an individual designer or even a school. This is obviously aimed at major corporations with major brands who will just pay it. But for everyone else, you will just see a black blob.

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jensjoy t1_iufmzg3 wrote

Oh wow, I somehow missed that. Thanks.
That's bad. Adobe has been unchallenged for too long. A lot of stuff they've pulled off since CC would have had big parts of their userbase running off if there was a considerable alternative.

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WilliamMinorsWords t1_iufop1k wrote

I think this just came out in the last couple of days, so don't feel like you're out of the loop or anything.

Adobe is becoming like the Amazon of design. They are acquiring everything, and unfortunately, we can't do our jobs with it. They acquired a major SaaS company, and now they're running wild with the subscription model.

Last week was the Adobe MAX conference, and they've now structured it so that all the good sessions are in person, and the virtual sessions I attended were absolute crap.

I've been an Adobe user since Illustrator88, but I feel like they've just jumped the shark at this point.

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