
How Pantone Is Still Turning Color into Money (2015) - bpierre
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-26/how-pantone-is-still-turning-color-into-money
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onion2k
Pantone is a example of how a good standard can generate value; in Pantone's
case it's _the_ standard for print color consistency. It's a shame that the
standard is closed and proprietary but it's a good example nonetheless.

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tenken
well until we get rid of Economics as a civilization ... we just have to live
with it. Nothing is Free in this world.

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wolfgke
> Nothing is Free in this world.

You mix "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer" here.

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callesgg
The way I see Pantone is they charge money to guarantee that a colored piece
of fabric always looks the same. I can go to Pantone in 10 years and say give
me a piece of 16-1234-tcx they will give me that and it will look exactly the
same as the previous sample I had. Coloring fabrics is not as easy as coloring
stuff on a screen.

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cptskippy
> Coloring fabrics is not as easy as coloring stuff on a screen.

eh.... both on nontrivial tasks.

Two identical RGB monitors side by side will not match and even after being
color matched using expensive tooling, they will not stay matched for long.
Getting two monitors from two different manufacturers, or even different
revisions of the same product, requires considerable effort.

On top of that the color space used by applications may not match, and may not
be compatible with the monitors. I always enjoy the color match game of
receiving a graphic from our art department because they rarely have their
tooling set to the RGB colorspace when they produce their graphics. So
depending on which browser you view the graphic in and on which platform you
view it you'll end up with wildly different colors. Because some browsers take
into account the monitor color profile and others don't, and Macs do a better
job with color than Windows which does an infinitely better job with color
than Linux (Android).

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callesgg
That is one way of seeing it.

The way i tend to look at colors in a computer is as following as long as you
use sRGB, L _A_ B or possibly even CMYK then it is up to the OS to show that
correctly.

In reality every device will have different background light, different
settings, different manufacturing process and the list continues there is just
no way all the parameters can be accounted for.

If you develop for the web or another multi platform environment you cant
expect colors to be spectrally same from device to device. AS such you can not
and should not develop applications that has that presumption.

Only in very specific controlled environments can one make the assumption that
a color is what it is and not a representation.

So coloring in a computer is easy cause the rules of the "game" is defined.
Show a specific sRGB color and that is what it is. If you have a bad screen
that wont show that color that is not my problem.

BTW the "RGB colorspace" is not a specific thing it is an idea, dont ever
refer to such a thing if you want to be productive.

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cptskippy
That's a very optimistic approach and will eventually bite you in the ass
without proper checks.

BTW people often generalize terms to simplify concepts for the uninitiated.

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amelius
I wish some company would do for odor what Pantone has done for color.

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tangue
This is really a great startup idea. From a unicorn perspective it won't do,
but what a beautiful business it would be.

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rleigh
It's already done. As you might expect, the food and drink industry have a
need for this. In the brewery I worked at in 1998, we had a commercial set in
our "taste training" room which was a set of defined things to smell/taste for
training the palate for subtle but specific flavours.

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chrisbennet
I did some computer graphics consulting for them years ago and learned a bit
about what they do. Here's a couple use cases as they were explained to me:

1\. Say you want to print my Coca Cola posters in China. As a designer you
could send them a swatch of paper with the right color OR I can just tell them
the Pantone color.

2\. Say you design something on your computer but you need to determine if you
can actually print it. The software I worked on would let you compare the
color gamut of various devices i.e. let you know if the item you designed
could be printed/rendered on a certain printer or T-shirts.

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cheath
#1 is definitely a problem. However, does RGB/CMYK/Hex not solve this?

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shocks
Well you definitely shouldn't be using RGB/Hex for print. Lots of these
colours cannot actually be printed, and there are different algorithms for
converting them to printable formats (that give different results).

As for CMYK, there is a difference between spot and process colour. CMYK is
process colour, made of lots of small spots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and
black ink. There are different ways you can do this and you will get different
effects. For example you could have grids of dots, but you could have the
grids at different angles.

Spot colour (pantone) is just ink that is that colour. You get exactly the
same every time, no matter the printer.

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medmunds
(I believe you've swapped the labels: process color mixes dots of CMYK inks to
approximate other colors; spot color uses an ink pigmented to the precise
color you want.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_model](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_model)
)

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shocks
You are correct. How embarrassing! I have edited my comment. Thanks. :)

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bobjordan
When you need to be right about color, you pay for it. I've paid close to
$1000 USD for official Pantone color guides over the last few years.

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johnward
I'm not sure I understand. What do you have to be right about? I would assume
if a brand has a registered pantone color they know the code? Why do you need
a book?

I'm no designer but it seems like Pantone created a solution then convinced
everyone else there was a problem.

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pjc50
The man with two watches knows that one of them is wrong, but only the man
with three watches knows what time it really is.

Similarly, it's possible to say "these printed things and signs are different
colours", but only with a reference can you say which one is the _wrong_
colour, authoritively enough to complain to whoever forgot to colour-correct
their part of the process.

And of course a brand has to pick a Pantone colour in the first place, for
which they will want a reference book.

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stdbrouw
> The man with two watches knows that one of them is wrong, but only the man
> with three watches knows what time it really is.

I realize it's an off-topic nitpick, but that's not actually true. You take
the average of all watches, and this will be your best guess for what time it
really is. So having two watches really is better than just one, and three
watches provides no guarantee of perfect accuracy.

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wolfgke
> I realize it's an off-topic nitpick, but that's not actually true. You take
> the average of all watches, and this will be your best guess for what time
> it really is.

This only holds under additional assumptions, as for example that the errors
of the watches are independent and normally distributed. In general this is
not a good idea.

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stdbrouw
If you know that errors are dependent or if you know the distribution of the
error, you can make an even better guess, but that certainly doesn't make
averaging "in general not a good idea."

You're going to make assumptions whatever way you do it, e.g. using
confirmation (two watches indicating the same time) to indicate truth assumes
that error is fairly rare (out of 3 watches only 1 will be wrong at any given
time) and that it's discontinuous rather than a smooth drift over time. No
assumptions, no conclusions.

Main point: more watches is always better, and three is not a magic number.

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Bromskloss
I'm still not sure how they are making money.

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rangibaby
They sell color books. You have to (according to them lol) buy a new one every
few years because the samples fade and change over time.

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was_boring
Color fading is a real concern in many industries. I have an old munsell book
(the standard for coloring dirt) from a retired geologist and it's no where
near the color in new copies.

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keithly
TIL there's a standard for dirt color matching.

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benmorris
I do software in the sign and digital graphics industry. We rely on Pantone to
make sure what we produce matches what the customer (usually somewhere else in
the world) expects. For this reason it is incredibly helpful to have a
standard. The swatch books are expensive though.

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strathmeyer
No, Bloomberg, I will not turn off my Ad Blocker.

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cs702
TL; DR: Pantone has a monopoly on print color standards. If you want printed
colors to match screen colors, you have little choice but to use Pantone.

