Convert CMYK to Pantone Colors

Once again, I’ve made another newbie mistake.  When putting together color combinations for our second round of screen printing, I picked my colors using the basic CMYK palette in Adobe Illustrator.  I tried to be extra careful this time by sending both the CMYK values and the Hexidecimal codes for the colors so I touched all bases.  But when I sent the artwork and colors to the printer, I got back the e-mail… “thanks, but can you send the PMS #s?”

PMS #s??  What’s that?

Well after an hour or so on-line figuring out what PMS#s are and trying to figure out how to convert my CMYK colors to PMS, I wanted to share 2 quick tips to help you deal with this and get close.

First… there’s no perfect match between custom colors and PMS.  If there is, then it’s coincidental that you picked just the right color combination.  And there’s no whiz-bang app that will somehow magically do it for you.  But there are a couple helpful things that you can do to keep from having to wade through more than 1,400 swatches (and multiple variations based on the print medium).

Tip #1: A Helpful Website

http://www.netfront.fr/Services/rgb2pantone/

There’s a helpful website that will at least get you in the ball park.  Bookmark this site and then enter either the RGB numbers or the Hexidecimal #s and submit your query.    This will give you a range of colors that are close.  That’s a big time saver there.  This is no substitute for getting color cards or designing using the Pantone palette in the first place, but if you’re in a tough spot, this can help.

 

Note: If you know the CMYK numbers but not the others, just open the color picker in a program like Photoshop or Gimp, plug the CMYK numbers in to get the color and equivalent Hexidecimal and RGB numbers.

Tip #2: Recolor Artwork in Illustrator

Use Illustrator to automatically re-color your artwork.  Before you pull up a Pantone Color Book and spend an hour or more hunting & pecking around for the right color match, use the really helpful “recolor artwork” tool in Adobe Illustrator.

Here’s how it works (see the video for a quick 4 minute example):

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=P5gnRqz1TB0

The Steps

I created a 2 inch square swatch in Illustrator using the CMYK color numbers from my original artwork in Photoshop.  Then I created a duplicate swatch to change that I can overlay on the original to see how close it gets.

From the Edit menu, select Edit Colors, then Recolor Artwork.

Illustrator will give you a dialogue box with a lot of different options.

Select the small icon (the one that looks like 6 small squares) to select which Color Book (there are lots of options here) you would like to use to recolor your artwork.  In my example, I use the Pantone Solid Coated color book.

Then select ok and Illustrator will automatically recolor the artwork making as close a match as possible.  You will see the Pantone color name/number in the swatches palette.  Place your swatches next to each other or overlap them to see how close you are.

Now, go back to your original artwork and start changing colors.