[CREATE] Free and legal download of Pantone colour palettes from Adobe

[Guillermo Espertino (Gez)]

El 28/03/13 21:15, Gregory Pittman escribió:

> If you are using Pantone as a spot color, the CMYK, the RGB, the Lab
> doesn't matter, since you are specifying a Pantone ink. What you might
> have your printer do theoretically is emulate a Pantone ink strictly as
> a cost-saving measure.

Exactly my point. If it's spot, the RIP will create an extra 
monochromatic plate with the coverage of that spot color, so the Lab 
value is irrelevant.
I guess the reason of storing the values in CIE Lab is just to offer a 
device independent reference which allows flexibility to convert to 
other spaces like the usual working RGBs or display profiles.
As I mentioned, if you're using a late/intermediate binding RGB-based 
workflow and no spot colors, those colors will be converted from Lab to 
your working RGB space, unless you're explicitly working in Lab "mode" 
in an application that allows it.
And you won't send Lab to a print shop, so in some point your lab will 
become RGB or CMYK.
As I said, no difference.

I mentioned the Formula guides (Lab) as the right ones for spot because 
Pantone recommends that. The reason behind this recommendation is 
simple: You'll get the best on-screen approximation possible from Lab to 
your working or display RGB, while previewing with CMYK (bridge books) 
would mean using swatches that already had a color transform to a 
constrained gamut.
Most of the Pantone spot colors aren't printable in CMYK, so using the 
CMYK values to preview those colors is a mistake.

> I don't think we really know the boundaries of what Pantone might
> complain about. It may well be that in your case they would not want to
> upset a customer, but I think it's appropriate to warn others to
> consider what they're doing and be careful. Does it really make sense
> that they would deny Scribus the right to include Pantone colors in our
> palettes? What threat is that? It suggests other things going on in the
> background.

I think that including this kind of resources in free software should be 
avoided.
It's not clear if they're ok or not with it, but it's good to keep in 
mind that their business includes selling royalties of their products to 
software makers.
Some Pantone partners could be unhappy to know that Pantone ask them 
money for the same we're using for free, and that's where our luck ends.
We should keep this as an "import" mechanism. Pantone allows that and 
offers resources for unsupported software (the EPS files I mentioned 
before) so what we're doing here is importing their data to our 
programs, instead of distributing their possibly copyrighted material.

I think it's unlikely that they'll be against this practice, but I'm 
sure they'd send us a beautiful cease and desist letter if we try to
include Pantone swatches in free software.

So far we're good. I see no reason to try something more dangerous :)

Gez.