Wanderslost t1_j20dwpj wrote on December 28, 2022 at 7:17 PM

Reply to comment by ocelot08 in ELI5: How is that Pantone colors don't have direct RGB counterparts? by ExternalUserError

Is it possible to get 12 color wheels of Pantone colors that mimic specifice color spaces, such as traditional RBY, RGB, CMKY and even artistically pleasant (but theoretically unsound) spectrums?

I would prefer wheels that have different saturation in rings. I have spent a lot of time fiddling with photoshopping and pdfs of a Pantone swatch book. It has been interesting, but I have to believe this work has been done before.

ocelot08 t1_j20gs91 wrote on December 28, 2022 at 7:36 PM

Lmk if I didn't understand your idea right, but based on my understanding of what you're proposing:

The issue with color matching is really the physical world. Mixing paints and printers aren't perfect but also leds and screen technologies are all a little different. Like one batch of leds may be a little more red, another a little more blue, so even if the computer gives the led the same color data, it will look different in the physical world.

But I think your idea could work, but you would need to control every stage of production and keep everything calibrated together:

all designers computers in the same color space
all monitors calibrated the same
all printers calibrated the same (both in office and at in the print shop)
and if you are using any digital displays, ideally those are all calibrated as well.

I think it's possible, it's just a lot of work for not much reward. And note that like anything in the physical world, it all deteriorates over time from wear or sunlight or whatever, so all those things would need to be calibrated regularly and done together.

Instead, we usually try and keep our pantone chips away from light, sometimes need to rebuy a pack, and just eyeball color matching with printers. It's generally assumed everyone in the chain has access to a well kept at least basic set of pantone chips.

Digital is a mess and basically we just don't have control (although I don't think ive ever used Pantone for anything digital). We test on as many different devices we can, but there's always going to be some folks with really terrible phone screens or something.

Wanderslost t1_j20vrrv wrote on December 28, 2022 at 9:15 PM

Thank you for your time.

I manufacture acrylic dice. I have 3 introductory (pantone C) colors that I just picked out because I liked them. The essence of my problem is I would like to offer 3 sets of 12 colors based off of these original colors. But I don't know how to pick the future pantones, though I have the original codes.

For bonus points. I thought it would be interesting if each set of 12 colors used a different color theory. However, I would settle for just making the house standard the painter's color wheels (ryb).

Not much translation needs to happen here. I provide the Pantone number, and they do it. The final product just needs to make sense with the dice already made. My comments above about pdfs and such was just a description of my (failed) attempts to figure this out.

Thanks again!

ocelot08 t1_j21buey wrote on December 28, 2022 at 11:05 PM

Ah interesting. I mean it's not gonna be much help, but I would basically just create a color palette in some Adobe program and then match pantone swatches to it. As it sounds like you've seen, color theory can get really complicated.

A nice tool is Adobe color. It won't give you a set of 12 but it could make for some good starting points as they have a number or ways to use different colors and push and pull them together as a set.

Anyways, good luck!