I read recently that Photoshop had Pantone colors, but recently Adobe’s Pantone license expired, so images created using Pantone colors simply lost that part of the image.
I’m not an expert on color, but isn’t almost anything represented by RGB? Why aren’t those colors just … colors? With specific number values that are encoded? Can these colors not be understood through regular web hex codes?
In: 16
Color consistency on most systems is barely a priority. Home screens and printers vary *wildly*
RGB is only for illuminated displays and even that has some pretty wild variations as most screens are not calibrated and don’t even try for perfect color consistency. Your average LED/LCD screen is TFT and color accuracy isn’t even a priority. Higher end screens are IPS which is at least consistent with colors across itself, you can then get ones that are calibrated to get a consistent view of the colors between computer screens
Pantone isn’t for display colors, its for print colors. Most printers are CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) but again there are calibration differences. For general use the CMYK values are close enough. If you want to make 50,000,000 of something at 8 different vendors and have them all look the same you’d need to have some way to specify colors and calibrations beyond just CMYK because that doesn’t adjust for if printer A is inherently a bit Cyan heavy in its prints
That’s where Pantone comes in. If you specify [Pantone Red 032](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/SG50_logo.jpg/480px-SG50_logo.jpg) and everyone has a Pantone calibrated printer and their booklet of reference swatches then all of them will come out looking *exactly* the same despite using different equipment
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