Which pantone book to use in illustrator

But keep reading, because there are 2 solutions to this. Tip: This is quick if you just need to convert 1 color — but if you will be doing this a lot, I recommend solution 2. This will then show you the closest color match from that book, which you can find in the default Illustrator Pantone color libraries. If you use these colors a lot, I highly recommend getting it set up instead of using the converter over and over — which is not very convenient for a long term solution.

Heads Up: We use cookies to customize your experience and track how you interact with our site to serve you better. Pantone Color Match Card Turn your phone into a color matching tool! Pantone API For software and web applications. Was this page helpful? Your feedback helps improve this site. Yes No. If you have a good photoshop file, the next step is converting colors to Pantones. This can easily be done with the Eyedropper Tool I. Once you have your file open in Photoshop, select the Eyedropper Tool or hit I.

With the tool selected click on the color you would like to conver to to a Pantone Color. Then double click on your Foreground Color which will bring open a Color Picker.

In the Top Section you can select your Pantone Book and it'll convert the color to the nearest Pantone. I typically prefer Photoshops conversion to illustrator so often I will copy and paste an Illustrator file into Photoshop to convert colors to Pantone.

In this case Red was a great conversion but it is still good to double check, a minute now can save hours on press. And because the spot colors use Lab values, the visible results are much closer to the real inks available. Using Lab values for spot colors also reduces the difference of appearance between the Normal and Overprint Preview viewing modes. CMYK, as a color mode, has a fairly limited gamut. Representing Pantone spot colors in CMYK values results in a wider difference of appearance between printed output and digital artwork.

Copy all Pantone libraries with extension. Use this workaround only if you encounter missing colors in legacy documents opened in Illustrator CS6 or CC. It is not recommended to use older Pantone libraries to add new colors to a document. There is no change in this process.

To add a spot color to a document, open the color book and click the desired swatch. CMYK values took priority over Lab values. The spot color added to the document usually came with CMYK values.

This workaround makes the Pantone spot color uniform across different versions of Illustrator. Files from earlier versions open successfully.