Photoshop users must pay a monthly fee to see and work with certain colors going forward, according to a tweet shared today that reveals how changes in Pantone’s licensing with Adobe have prompted new fees in the world’s leading graphics editing program. Users who try to open a .PSD with Pantone colors and haven’t paid the license for what is reportedly a plug-in will see black instead, even if the file is over two decades old, it’s said. Illustrator and InDesign will also no longer support Pantone-owned colors for free. Headquartered in New Jersey and owned by colorimeter maker X-Rite, some of Pantone’s biggest accomplishments include the Pantone Matching System, a color communication system with 500 colors that it introduced in 1963.
Fun times ahead for #Adobe designers. Today, if you open a PSD (even one that’s 20 years old) with an obscure PANTONE colour, it will remove the colour and make it black. Pantone want US$21/month for access, and Solid Coated goes behind the paywall in early November. pic.twitter.com/BUxzViYFaQ
— Iain Anderson (@funwithstuff) October 28, 2022
From a Kotaku report:
The removal of Pantone’s colors from Adobe’s software was meant to happen March 31 this year, but that date came and went. It was then due for August 16, then August 31. However, this month, people are noticing the effects, reporting issues with creations using Pantone’s spot colors. And the solution? It’s an Adobe plug-in to “minimize workflow disruption and to provide the updated libraries to the Adobe Creative Cloud users.” Which, of course, costs $15 a month. It’s Netflix, but for coloring in!
However, Pantone still states in its out-of-date FAQ that, “This update will have minimal impact on a designer’s workflow. Existing Creative Cloud files and documents containing Pantone Color references will keep those color identities and information.” Yet today, people are reporting that their Photoshop is informing them, “This file has Pantone colors that have been removed and replaced with black due to changes in Pantone’s licensing with Adobe.”
Others have reported that even attaching a Pantone license within Photoshop isn’t fixing the issue, colors still replaced by black, and workarounds sound like a pain.
Update – 11/6/2022 – Adobe’s Ashley Still, Senior Vice President of Digital Media Marketing, Strategy & Global Partnerships sent us the following statement:
As we had shared in June, Pantone decided to change its business model. 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 now requires customers to purchase a premium license through Pantone Connect and install a plug-in using Adobe Exchange.
We are currently looking at ways to lessen the impact on our customers. In the meantime, customers also have access to up to 14 extensive color books through Creative Cloud subscriptions.
Adobe Creative Cloud empowers creators with flagship apps like Photoshop, Illustrator etc. to create wherever inspiration strikes and now offers innovations like Share for Review for collaboration, new AI tools to simplify complex tasks, and powerful image editing within the browser.
Discussion (12 replies)
Join Discussion →The funny part:
It's only licensed if you refer to it as Sunset Retard Red. If you just call it 0x7d432e -- then it's perfectly ok to use.
I certainly hope so (but I use RGB numbers from 0-255 instead of hexadecimal)
If they are just blocking any tone that happens to match a named Pantone color, even when not using its pantone name, then fuck them long, and fuck them hard. If Pantone is making them do this I hope someone sues the living daylights out of them.
You can't fucking own a color.
So, lets play a game.
Lets say I take a 22 megapixel image using a high end camera of a bunch of colorful flowers, and then open up that image in Photoshop. Are they going to turn every pixel that happens to randomly match the RGB value of a defined Pantone color black? If they do, they just put themselves out of business.
I don't even understand why Pantone exists anymore since at least the 90's.
Sure, back in the day, you needed a way to tell your printers which colors to use, but ever since software defined RGB values, why pick a defined Pantone color when you can just pick any color you want, and tell your printer the RGB or hex value of it?
Why would you choose to do something so dumb as you use a licensed version of something that is completely free?
Would that include Windows, since other OSes are free?
...and these companies wonder why people pirate software.
It's different. The colors are identical with or without Pantone "Shitstain Brown" names/references or not.
Pantone literally adds no value and hasn't since the emergence of 24bit color codes in operating systems in the early 90's.
Where pantone adds value is vendors and creators can have the same color codes and a common reference guide to make sure colors match. It's cheaper than making sure everyone you do business with has the exact same spec monitor tuned to the same spec for color reference.
In a NON professional setting where you are not dealing with 3rd parties it is a waste and being charged for access to specific colors is bullshit.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Monthly subscription is the stupidest for home use anyway where you are not constantly making money off of the product. Just use it to edit granny's graduation picture as a surprise before the holidays.
Not that I see much reason to own photoshop as a home user, with Gimp, Krita, and Paint.net available.
Even when dealing with third parties what prevents them from just using numerical or hexadecimal color codes?
You'd need some sort of calibration to display the Pantone colors right as well, unless you are going to compare everything to physical Pantone chips, which would be an absurd way of doing things in 2022. (or 2012 or even 2002...)
She finally graduated?! It's been a long time comin' -- congrats to her!
There are non digital uses for this stuff so having a universal reference is handy to have if needed.