Another stumper for me. We are a screen printing shop, and we use specific color inks that have PMS equivalents. Our artists use Photoshop and set up areas that are specified to be specific colors (PMS 300 for example). The problem is that when our color approval people are checking the art, and use the eye dropper to sample the area that is specified as PMS 300, when they go to the color picker and custom the color indicated is different (often 660). This occurs whether the color is painted onto an image or if a shape layer is created and then sampled instead of checking the shape layer color by double clicking the shape layer.
Is there some setting that we are missing that should allow for eye dropper sampling of colors, or is this just not possible to do?
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If you are actually printing spot colors, and the files you speak of are CMYK files without any spot channels, then you hve more problems than just what PMS number the color picker assigns to a sampled color…
We create art in RGB mode, and we have actions that build the separations for printing the shirts in a process simulation that is 6 colors plus a white underprint. Not everyone works in CMYK or aims to produce CMYK plus one or plus two. But how we work is less important than the real problem that we are signifying a specfic color and the eye dropper isn’t reading the color specified.
Does anyone have anythign to say that is actually useful?
Sorry, I took "specific color inks" to mean spot color.
Otherwise, make sure that the pantone books (digital) and the color settings are the same between the people creating the art and the people checking the art.
Either way, any single color reading can have multiple true color meanings depending on what device prints it.
That is what color management is all about, assigning meaning to the numbers via profiles.
In Photoshop a Pantone Color, chosen from the Picker, is automatically converted to the mixture of CMYK which will give the best representation of the designated spot Pantone color when it is converted to process inks using the Lab values (designated by Pantone Inc.) as translated by the CMYK Profile which is currently selected in your color settings.
Change your CMYK Profile and you will see that your eye dropper readings have changed.
Set-up spot color channels from the beginning and you won’t have that problem as separate plates will be generated for each spot color and the on-screen representation of each Pantone color will have no effect on your final output.
On the other hand, if you work in CMYK from the start, you can specify your CMYK values for each object and the colors will not be changed — unless you convert your file to another CMYK Profile.
But that still isn’t the issue that I am having. On a single computer I can specify a specifc color (PMS 300) and when I read that color with the eye dropper it will read as PMS 660. And if I create a shape layer and specify the shape layer be PMS 300, when I sample that color with the eye dropper, it still reads as PMS 660.
Yet if I specify PMS 2925 in either method and sample it, it reads as PMS 2925.
We use a specific set of PMS colors that closely (but not exactly) match our actual printing inks. About half of those when specified will not read correctly with the eye dropper, but if a shape layer is used and double clicked to check it’s properties will show the proper color.
So are we in a situation where we cannot verify that the artist specified a particular color? We can deal with it if that is the case. But if there is a setting that we are missing that will allow us to read the correctly specified color, then we need to find that setting so we can proof our art correctly.
<< On a single computer I can specify a specifc color (PMS 300) and when I read that color with the eye dropper it will read as PMS 660. And if I create a shape layer and specify the shape layer be PMS 300, when I sample that color with the eye dropper, it still reads as PMS 660.>>
If you are working on an RGB file, your CMYK Profile is determining the CMYK make-up of your "PMS 300" and your eyedropper is showing the results of the Lab-to-CMYK conversion.
Try this: In your info. palette, set the first read-out to CMYK (Actual Color) and set the second read-out to CMYK (Proof Color). Then, in the View menu, choose Proof setup/Custom and try different profiles.
And specify your colors in CMYK percentages and NOT as "Pantone 300" unless you use the same PMS "book" that your artist did (which might be the "Pantone Solid to Process Coated" book — or might not).
Also you can NOT get a true representation of Pantone Ink unless you print with that actual ink.
Most Pantone colors can’t be replicated using Process inks which is why we use Spot colors in the first place.
We are not TRYING to get a true representation of a Pantone ink. We ARE using Pantone inks to simulate the specific inks that we use for Silkscreen printing on shirts.
Stop trying to pigeon hole me into your limited vision of the way I should work and just answer the simple question.
But apparently you already have. What I want to do is apparently not possible.
Why can’t you "experts" just say that instead of trying to get me to change what I cannot change, the way we do our work day to day?
JEEZE! Why can’t you people just answer a simple question instead of trying to assume that I don’t have 20+ years of pre-press experience and the ability to know that there is a difference between offset printing and screen printing. I know how to set up spot colors for DCS output. That isn’t the way this company works though. And their processes work quite well for what they do. Open your minds.
<< And their processes work quite well for what they do. >>
Except that they don’t seem to be able to understand the first thing about CMS.
<< We are not TRYING to get a true representation of a Pantone ink. We ARE using Pantone inks to simulate the specific inks that we use for Silkscreen printing on shirts. >>
By which I understand you to mean: "We are using Pantone COLORS to simulate the specific inks ."
What you are failing to grasp is that unless you are opening a can of ink actually marked "Pantone 300" (or one mixed from 13 parts of PANTONE Process Blue and 3 parts of PANTONE Reflex Blue!) that you are NOT using Pantone 300 but an emulation of that color.
That emulation will depend on which Pantone Book that you use to specify (provide a recipe) for how that color should look on your screen and on your proofing device and finally on your shirts.
My explanation assumed that you had the desire to have this knowledge and the ability to understand what you were being told.
You, and your artists, need to get on the same page. That is why I recommend that you should work in CMYK (change the flaming workflow as it doesn’t work!) and use the "Pantone® Solid to Process Coated" book OR specify your own CMYK percentages which match your company’s non-pantone Pantone® colors.
<< That isn’t the way this company works though. And their processes work quite well for what they do. >>
Except that they apparently DON’T work — or you wouldn’t be asking for help!
Thank you for the non-answers. I will look elsewhere for my answers as it is apparent that the elitists here feel that the only way to answer a simple question is by trying to get someone to totally reinvent a wheel which is not broken.
And what you fail to grasp is that we are not using the fucking pantone ink, we are using the pantone color to simulate the wiliflex ink that we use for screen printing.
<< we are using the pantone color to simulate the wiliflex ink that we use for screen printing. >>
I am glad that you do now appear to understand that part. And the difference between a Pantone® Ink and a representation of the COLOR that that particular batch of ink deposited on a particular substrate on a particular press when that particular swatch book was printed at 11.03 a.m. on a particular day in a particular year
For the rest of your problem, you will eventually have to accept that you can’t "get there from here" by your route.
Obstinate stupidity will get you nowhere — with or without the expletives.
I have always understood exactly what we are doing.
What you do not understand is that in the real world (that is where I live, I don’t know what fantasy world you live in), you cannot up and change procedures that have been in place for years, and are working quite well, just because some snooty, holier than thou know-it-all who doesn’t know jack about your business says that it is the wrong way to do what your company is doing quite successfully. And it is damned arrogant of you to suggest such a drastic change when my question was simply "Is there some setting that we are missing that should allow for eye dropper sampling of colors, or is this just not possible to do?"
The answer apparently is "No, there is no way to get the eye dropper/color picker to display the Pantone color number that was used to specify the color on an RBG or CMYK image."
But did anyone give me that simple answer? No. You all had to show your supreme superiority by telling me that everything else I was doing was wrong.
Obstinate? Look in the mirror. Expletives or no, you are the one who was obstinate and couldn’t just answer a simple freaking question with a simple freaking answer.
And don’t assume that just because someone is looking for a simple answer and doesn’t spout off a ton of information about color theory that they don’t know all about it. That is the most arrogant act of all.
Refusing to accept advice (when you have asked for help) while insisting on continuing to do something the wrong way; and then swearing at those who have patiently tried to straighten-out your total misconceptions of how CM works in Photoshop (and what your eyedropper is telling you); THAT is arrogance.
May we wish you luck in your current employment — you are going to need it.
You came here asking for advice. You received advice. At that point, if you didn’t like the advice, a simple thank you would have sufficed. Period.
Instead, you fly off the handle.
When someone gets that irrationally upset at someone, especially someone who is offering advice, it usually means only one thing: that person is frustrated, mad at himself but unable to recognize it.
Phil, the picker makes it’s calculations based on the CMYK value, not the RGB, regardless of weather you’re using RGB, LAB, CMYK or any other colour space.
I’ve worked in screen print art for for many years, the best colour matching I’ve had is when my ink mixer matches to what’s on the monitor, not just some number the colour picker has pulled out.
One more thought. The purpose of the forum is for everybody to benefit from all questions and all answers, not just the original posters.
Therefore, the replies and advice you have received may prove valuable for other users who read this thread down the road, even if you didn’t like them. Insulting those who volunteered to reply to your inquiry is totally out of line.
Pantone PMS 300 is a color name, not a color. If you want to specify specific colors in RGB, pick an RGB working space (preferably one that can actually hold the color you’re trying to specify), and go by the RGB numbers.
It’s entirely likely that the problem occurs because you’re speccing colors that lie outside the gamut of your RGB space, so they get clipped to the nearest equivalent that’s possible in your chosen RGB space. Then the eyedropper picks the clipped equivalent.
If you work in a small RGB space like sRGB or Colormatch RGB, this will happen often.
Note to all: Photoshop CS Pantone libraries contain Lab values. The result you get is the Lab value converted to your chosen RGB or CMYK space. Photoshop’s Pantones haven’t been CMYK based for a long (Photoshop 6?) time…
<< In Photoshop a Pantone Color, chosen from the Picker, is automatically converted to the mixture of CMYK which will give the best representation of the designated spot Pantone color when it is converted to process inks using the Lab values (designated by Pantone Inc.) as translated by the CMYK Profile which is currently selected in your color settings. >>
Although the word "converted" is perhaps clearer in meaning than "translated".
One more thought. The purpose of the forum is for everybody to benefit from all questions and all answers, not just the original posters.
Therefore, the replies and advice you have received may prove valuable for other users who read this thread down the road, even if you didn’t like them. Insulting those who volunteered to reply to your inquiry is totally out of line.>>
While admitedly I had not considered that some of the answers might help other users, I still say that attempting to tell me that we are doing things wrong working in RGB as opposed to CMYK or in all spot alpha channels when you have no idea of our workflow is just arrogant and totally pointless. I spent 7 years working in prepress for offset printers, and the way I learned to do things in that environment does indeed clash with the way things work here. But the point is it does work here, and is not in need of a complete overhaul, just some fine tuning. There are more methods to working than just CMYK. And there are more ways to handle spot color simulation of CMYK than just working in alpha channels in the design stage of a piece of artwork.
So what we are going to do is build a custom swatch pallette of the colors we print with, building the swatches based on the RGB values we get when reading the colors with a Pantone colorimeter. And we will build a list of those colors and the RGB values so that the color approval people will be able to sample the color requested and verify that it is or is not the color that was requested.
<<Refusing to accept advice (when you have asked for help) while insisting on continuing to do something the wrong way; and then swearing at those who have patiently tried to straighten-out your total misconceptions of how CM works in Photoshop (and what your eyedropper is telling you); THAT is arrogance.>>
No, assuming that somone has "total misconceptions of how CM works" when their question was not about CM but instead about how the eye dropper and Color Picker work is arrogance at best, and down right insulting at worst.
Learn how to answer someones questions without assuming that they are stupid.
See, that is what I mean. You all refuse to see that something else outside of your realms of experience might actually work. That is true arrogance. Try being open minded. YOU might learn something then.
Me, I have learned a lot since taking this job. And I thought I knew a lot before.
–>No, assuming that somone has "total misconceptions of how CM works" when their question was not about CM but instead about how the eye dropper and Color Picker work is arrogance at best, and down right insulting at worst.
If you believe that questions about how the eye dropper and Color Picker work are unrelated to color management, then you do indeed have significant if not total misconceptions of how CM works. Much of the Color Picker’s behavior is dependent on color management, and whenever you spec a color in a mode other than the one in which you’re working (as in this case, where you’re speccing Lab color in an RGB doc), color management comes into play.
The problem you are experiencing is a color management problem, specifically, you’re speccing colors from Lab values that cannot exist in the RGB space in which you’re working. A large RGB space such as ProPhoto RGB may not eliminate the problem entirely (I haven’t gone through every color in the Pantone library) but would certainly make it much, much rarer.
Anne, the CMYK profile has no role when you spec Pantone solid colors (which are defined as Lab) in an RGB doc. The resulting color is a straight conversion from the Lab definition to working RGB. The Pantone solid to process colors are defined as CMYK, so for those the CMYK profile does indeed play a role, but not with the Pantone solids (or any other color defined by Lab values).
I was assuming (it may be wrongly) that Phil was complaining that the CMYK values which he was seeing in his Info paletteeven though he was working in RGBwere not the same as the ones that he expected to see there, or what he understood that his artist had specified.
Hence my explanation that whatever CMYK Profile that he might have loaded in his Color Settings was affecting the CMYK readouts in his Info palette.
Phil’s problem is that he does not seem to have even a basic understanding of how CM worksand how the way that he sets his Color Settings WILL have impact on his results.
Neither does he tell us which values he is reading in his Info palette and even if he knows how the different settings in that palette will change the values that he sees when using the eye-dropper.
It would also help if he spent a little time in the Custom Colors palette and saw how his choice of Pantone "book" will affect the way that "Pantone® 300" will be defined.
It would not hurt him to add an evening spent reading his Manual to his "twenty years of experience"!
The specific complaint was that he chose a Custom color from the library, then sampled it with the eyedropper, opened the color picker, went back to the custom library and got a color other than the one originally speccedno info palette mentioned.
I suspect that this is something very few people do, but if you fill a ProPhoto RGB doc with Pantone 300 C from the Pantone solid coated library, sample the color with the eyedropper, open the Color Picker and choose Custom, you’ll get Pantone 300 C.
Do the same thing with Colormatch RGB and you’ll get Pantone 285C instead, because Pantone 300 C doesn’t exist in Colormatch RGB.
From the fact that he complained Pantone 300 C turns to Pantone 660 C, I deduce that he’s working in Apple RGB. And the small gamut of Apple RGB is what causes the problem.
The problem isn’t that the eydropper is failing to read the color assigned, it’s that the color being assigned isn’t the color the user thinks is being assigned, because that color doesn’t exist in the working space.
At least, that’s how I interpreted the original post.
Interestingly, with Color Settings at US PrePress Defaults on my calibrated monitor,
If I choose "Pantone Solid Coated 300c" and then fill an area in an RGB file with that foreground color I get 000 R, 103 B, 194 G.
If I now double click on the foreground swatch in the tools palette, and when the picker opens, go to Custom; it is "Pantone 285c" which is highlighted.
Filling another area in my RGB file with this "285c" produces a read-out of: 000 R, 103 B, 194 G.
So Lab is doing its best to match the out-of-gamut values for "300c" to the nearest usable RGB renderingwhich actually marries-up with "285c"?
[In a similar experiment on the same computer but with different Color Settings*, the "replacement color" for "Pantone 300c" did in fact turn out to be "Pantone 660c".]
So why can’t the colour picker be instructed to pick a colour that is there to start with? That seems to be the guts of Phils complaint. The answer seems to be that there isn’t a "pantone" colour space.
Pantone 300C = L40 A-13 B-63 (from my version of CS anyway) but when I eyedrop it after it is set as a fill in an rgb file (the standard for screen printing) I get L43 A3 B-57
If you are talking about Spot Color Inks (Pantone Solids): there is only a Lab specification to tell your monitor how best to display (in your Color Space) the color of a Pantone-named ink which will be used to print your Spot Color Channel.
What you see in RGB, in Soft-proofed CMYK; on your inkjet print or a 4c Process press sheet is the nearest replication that it is possible to produce of the color of an ink which Pantone Inc., requires to be mixed from defined proportions of specially formulated chemical colorants.
If you are talking about replicating a Pantone color using other than a Spot color ink, then you should be looking at the Pantone Solid to Process books or even the Process books.
I hate to be the one to break the news to you that there are many different flavors of RGB, some of which can hold Pantone 300 C. What would the color picker use to determine whether the color was "there to start with?"
The foreground document? (Bear in mind that the color picker isn’t tied to a particular document.)
The current working space for RGB? (Again, bear in mind that the color picker isn’t tied to a particular document, or a particular color mode.)
The current working space for CMYK? (Same reservations.)
If you’re asking for an RGB gamut alarm based on your current settings when you pick a Lab-defined color in the color picker, there’s a forum for feature requests.
Having the color picker arbitrarily (as far as the user is concerned) refuse to load some custom colors but not others does not seem like a step in the right direction, so if you do make a feature request, consider all its implications.
The color picker is an amazing piece of work that does the right thing, automatically, better than 99% of the time, but I do wish that people would Read The Fine Manual and realize that the only numbers you can expect the color picker to honor scrupulously are those that are entered in the color mode of the documentRGB for RGB files, CMYK for CMYK files, Lab for Lab files. Anything else involves a conversion, and that conversion is governed by Color Settings (which should serve as one more reminder that you can’t turn color management off in Photoshop).
Indeed there isn’t a Pantone color space Pantone is in the business of selling color names, and falls over backwards pointing out that the actual color may resemble the one in the swatchbook to varying degrees. But since all the Pantone solids are defined as Lab values, Lab is a de facto Pantone solid color space. ProPhoto RGB works pretty well too, though.
I do get it Bruce, I’m just trying to help Phil understand it by asking the leading questions. (I’m not clever or articulate enough to answer them myself!)
We ARE using Pantone inks to simulate the specific inks that we use for Silkscreen printing on shirts.
From #11:
And what you fail to grasp is that we are not using the f***ing pantone ink, we are using the pantone color to simulate the wiliflex ink that we use for screen printing.
Seemingly contradictory.
And I never really meant to lavish Bruce with such high praise, I was just tickled that this prepress guy, full of attitude, slings that insult in the thread where the guy that helped write the book on color management posts, not to mention another guy who is credited in the same book with "asking all the hard questions".
Sometimes you gotta laugh like hell.
I have a shiny Delaware quarter that says he won’t be back.
Though he will surely read the recent additions and probably gain from them.
Bruce, thank you. Finally someone who isn’t "talking down" to me or trying to tell me that I am dumb for working in RGB mode. I tried the ProPhoto RGB Space, and low and behold… the color picker tells me that PMS 300 is PMS 300. In fact, so far any of the colors that we have been using to simulate the printing inks that we use are reading correctly in the ProPhoto RGB Gamut.
That will get us closer to where we want to be. And in the meantime we have ordered a spectrometer that will give us RGB Values of the color swatches that we have that are the exact colors we print with. So we will be building a custom swatch library for both Illustrator and Photoshop with the wilflex color names and proper RGB values for those colors. And then we will be fully set.
I will agree with that to a point. If your end result is to print in CMYK, than I always recommend working in CMYK. If you end result is to output to a film recorder or put files on the web then RGB is the way to go. It all depends on your final target. I am a big advocate of working in the colorspace that you are going to be printing in.
In our case however, working in spot color channels would be limiting to the artists, so we work in RGB and then separate to 6+ spot colors to achieve a kind of process simulation.
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