: Issues with Pantone Colours in InDesign I have the branding guidelines in PDF format (so viewing on screen) for an organisation with the specific Pantone Colours displayed alongside their code.

@Gretchen549

First, having a Pantone solid uncoated formula guide by hand, I would say that the upper (duller) color looks closer to the sample than the bottom one. But actually both of your screenshots look quite far from the truth (the 485U sample looks darker and more to the brown, and 299U looks even less vibrant).

I've converted 485U into RGB in Photoshop and it gave me #c66753 , and 299U gave #548cd3 , which is much closer to what I see.

Second, and more important, it's an extemely bad idea to design for screen using the PMS color specifications. Here's why.

The Pantone Matching System you are referring to has been designed specifically for print. The number of the color (without a letter index) does not actually specify the color itself as we see it - it specifies the coloring properties of the pigment used in printing. The actual color you get on a printed material will differ greatly depending on the paper characteristics. For this reason there are letter indices: C for Coated, M for Matte, U for Uncoated - to have a screen estimation of how the printed material will look like.

In your case, you have “U” colors. You would expect any U color to be rather dull because it imitates the pigment being printed on a paper with high soaking ability.

Converting a PMS number to RGB value (which you actually need for screen design) is not unambiguous. It depends on the software (proved above with CS5/CS6 difference) and active CMYK and RGB profiles used in your color settings. That's why you can use PMS number only as a very rough reference when designing for screen.

The best thing you can do in your situation is to find a printed Pantone solid uncoated formula guide and compare what you see with the available variants.

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@Murray976

This is applicable to Creative Suite 6 applications only, previous versions of Adobe software will not be effected by this.

Adobe/Pantone felt it was a good idea to include the Pantone+ color books in CS6 applications. The Pantone+ books are built upon LAB values and do not contain CMYK color builds. Previous versions of the software included both LAB and CMYK builds.

You'll find LAB builds of the Pantone colors in the Pantone+ color books to be far less vibrant on the whole. You can see this in older software versions if you alter the spot color build to LAB rather than the default CMYK build.

Pantone states this "is to better represent color on press". I find that a bit arguable. In my opinion, Pantone needs to sell things... so every year or two they "reinvent" something which was working fine in order to generate revenue. After all CMYK builds have been in use for, what? 20+ years?

In any respect, you can check THIS LINK at Adobe.com to see how to use older color books, with the traditional CMYK color builds, in Indesign CS6. The page will state it is for Illustrator, but continue reading, it applies to both Illustrator and Indesign CS6.

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@Phylliss782

A standards guide should provide each color in the three relevant formulations:


Spot (Pantone)
Print process (CMYK)
Screen (hex or RGB)


The values for each are spelled out in text under a single swatch for exact reference. It doesn't matter what the user's screen displays since they always have the numbers right in front of them.

A spot color in InD will rarely display well on screen. For that reason, if you are distributing the document for electronic use, your reference swatch on page should use the RGB version of the color.

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