Why aren’t Designers so Confused about the Pantone Color Matching System? Commentary on a Move to a Subscription-First Product

Creatives who understandably want to continue using the industry-standard color system are expected to pay a $15 monthly / $90 annual subscription for a Pantone license via the Adobe Pantone Connect plugin.

Prior to the introduction of the Color Matching System, companies used individual color guides which gave differing results as each ink company could interpret “red” as slightly different shades. The industry standard color match system used in at- home printers, called CMYK, is viewed as inferior as the required combination of black, red, and blue can lead to slight variations. Designers working on large projects are more reliable with Pantone because it doesn’t require a combination of colors.

There are several workarounds available to try and restore the lost Pantone color swatches. These include disabling Adobe application updates if you still have access to Pantone color books, or simply copying the metadata values for your required Pantone range.

Semple’s studio has multiple licenses to the Adobe Creative Cloud, the suite of design apps from the company behind Photoshop and Illustrator, which moved to a subscription model in 2012 after decades as a single-purchase, permanent ownership product. Part of a broader shift across many industries is to upsell segments of products and change to time-limited loans of content that started with audio streaming and downloads.

Semple—who disliked the shift from Adobe to a subscription-first product—also fears that this latest shift to charge for Pantone colors will make it harder for young artists with less disposable income to use what is an important set of color palettes for anyone who wants to produce a printed product. “They’re literally holding the colors hostage,” he says. If you do not pay you will not be able to see your work.