Just under a year ago, we reported on a falling out between Adobe and Pantone over inclusion of Pantone colour libraries in Adobe's popular applications, resulting in them being dropped by Adobe. Pantone Connect became a subscription service as a result. Now, designer blogs are full of outrage at an alleged doubling of subscription rates - and designers with Adobe subs having their colours changed to black!
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| Access denied. Some Adobe Creative Suite users are finding colours selected are now rendering as black |
Our friend Gareth Ward at UK industry newletter print business ezine reported:
"Adobe software users are discovering that Pantone references in standing jobs are being rendered as black following the termination of licensing agreements between Pantone and Adobe. Many have replaced old references with other ways to describe colours, others are paying the Pantone subscription. Others are seeing black, if not red."
Subscribers to Adobe Creative Cloud used to get all the Pantone library included, thanks to a licensing agreement. Now, even on archived jobs 20 years old the message that pops up is:
The 'Learn more' takes the user to a place where they can subscribe to Pantone Connect. UK journal Printweek has reported the annual single-seat subscription started at GBP£42.99 p.a when the split from Adobe was announced, then rose to GBP £89.99 and is now anything up to GBP£180 p.a. depending on nature of subscription.
Adobe's own comment is:
“Some of the Pantone Color Books that are pre-loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were phased-out from future software updates in August 2022. To access the complete set of Pantone Color Books, Pantone requires customers to purchase a premium license through Pantone Connect and install a plug-in using Adobe Exchange.”
User comments have included:
"Charging for this service after all the money we've spent is ridiculous and nothing more than a cash grab."
and:
"Just so bad in so many ways. Clunky, ugly, yet another subscription to access a digital product that I already pay for through the Pantone books."
There is even dissatisfaction with the way Connect works: "This thing is an absolute mess. With Premium, it doesn't function like a regular swatch library in Illustrator. It doesn't actually add the Pantones to your swatches, it simply gives you a CMYK or RGB mix instead. Just awful."
One designer tweeted: "This is so ridiculous. Pantone colors are nothing but a list of numbers (as far as computers are concerned) and designers know this. What Adobe & Pantone are doing here is saying “hey user, we think you are really dumb.” Telling your users they are dumb is a big mistake."
Jonny Evans of ComputerWorld magazine reckons: "The decision and the way it is being applied represents a horrifying own goal for both firms, and may well be a business study lecture in how not to create good customer experiences for the future."
Reportedly, after November, the only Pantone Color books remaining for use without a license will be Pantone + CMYK Coated, Pantone + CMYK Uncoated, and Pantone + Metallic Coated.
Fortunately work-arounds are springing up using the 6-digit Hex keys for example, and other applications such as Afinity and CorelDraw. Many designers spoken to no longer use Pantone libraries at all - denominating special colours in CMYK values, particularly for digital wide format and cut sheet output. CxF (Colour exchange Format) is also increasingly adopted by CM providers such as CGS Oris and GMG. Pantone does not own the colours, it merely catalogues them as a universal reference point.
In a nutshell, a corporate fall-out between two major software suppliers to the print industry is impacting on their own customers in a negative way. Adobe has to pass on the link to access the Pantone Connect libraries, and Pantone itself appears to be saying "Pay up or shut up." and is content for its long-term users to be denied access to colours they originally paid for years prior. How sad.
Ironically, Pantone is owned by X-Rite, suppliers of spectrophotometers that enable you measure colours in L*a*b* spectral data:- and reproduce it accurately. Both are part of the huge Danaher private equity group.
When Pantone unveiled its Color Of The Year for 2022 – it was described as: "a fine shade of 'dynamic periwinkle blue' hue with a vivifying violet-red undertone called Very Peri (pic right), meant to represent humanity embracing an 'altered landscape after an intense period of isolation, and 'opening up to a new vision as we re-write our lives.'
How about we just call it the 'New Black?'
