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• • August 4, 2013 at 8:08 am #64663
    Dat Le

    Participant

    Hi there. I’m working with a huge document with a lot of text. The text colors are in Pantone colors, however, I think I need to make them CMYK so the printers can print my document.

    I used to be able to just double click on a Pantone swatch, click the drop-down menu and choose “Process” instead of “Spot,” and then click “CMYK” and voila, it’s translated to CMYK.

    However, in this document, for some reason, my Pantone swatches won’t respond. See image: https://i.imgur.com/Ja7MmEN.png

    I changed the type from Spot to Process, but it won’t let me make it CMYK.

    I can make a copy of the Pantone swatch and THEN turn that copy into CMYK, but then it’d be a pain for me to go through the document and “translate” every Pantone color to its CMYK equivalent manually.

    What’s going on? Is there an easier way to do this?

    Thanks!

  • August 4, 2013 at 12:20 pm #64665
    Gert Verrept

    Member

    Did you, in the “ink manager” select the “all spots to process” for the pantone colors? That way all the pantones will be converted to cmyk.
    Or, when creating to pdf, select to output tab, color conversion=convert to destination, destination = coated fogra (or the one you need, select “ink manager”, select the pantone colors and select “all spots to process”

    • August 4, 2013 at 5:20 pm #64666
      Dat Le

      Participant

      I’m not familiar with Ink Manager?

  • August 4, 2013 at 10:26 pm #64671
    Gert Verrept

    Member

    The ink manager is used to convert your pantones to cmyk.

  • August 6, 2013 at 1:29 am #64690
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    You’re getting that greyed-out dialogue because there is a placed image such as an .eps or an .ai that is using that PMS colour. Some PMS colours are natively set to the Lab range rather than CMYK, pastels I think.

    In order to release it you will have to find the colour and edit it in Illustrator to be a proper CMYK mix. To find it you can open the Separations Preview (SHIFT + F6) and turn all the colours off except the one you are after. The Separations preview also contains the Ink Manager gert mentioned, but to start converting with profiles in output through InDesign you need to be very confident in how ID converts things and what numbers you will end up with in your final PDF, so I would recommend the belt and braces approach.

  • August 8, 2013 at 5:31 am #64744
    Colin Flashman

    Member

    since CS6, the Pantone Solid Coated and Uncoated libraries, regardless of illustrator, indesign or photoshop, are based on LAB values rather than CMYK equivalents. Others i’m not so sure but those two – definitely.

    The ink manager that gert is referring to is available from the flyout panel of the Separations preview palette.

    It is also available from the flyout panel of the swatches palette.

    Once this palette is open, there is a checkbox on the bottom left corner that says “all spots to process” – click this and all spots – regardless where the colour was created – will be converted to process.

    While this checkbox is a down-and-dirty way of changing all spots to process, it is worth noting that the same spot colour can have different colour breakdowns depending on what program contained the colour. This is explained in more detail in an old piece: https://colecandoo.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/spot-color-of-bother/

    Ultimately, it depends on how colour critical the output is to yourself, your client or third parties involved (e.g. advertisers that have supplied ads with spot colours that need to meet certain colour criteria).

  • March 3, 2014 at 11:05 am #67429
    Aga Kluzik

    Member

    Is there a way to tell InDesign to ALWAYS separate Pantone colors to CMYK? Now when you add new Pantone swatch you have to update it in Ink Manager…

  • March 4, 2014 at 3:37 am #67444
    Niels JÌürgen Pedersen

    Member

    You can convert the whole document to CMYK, when you export it to pdf, by choosing a CMYK profile.

  • July 8, 2014 at 2:04 pm #69378
    Annette Murray

    Participant

    I really don’t like the conversion that InDesign and Illustrator applies to spot Pantone colors to CMYK using LAB.

    Convert Pantone 364 C to CMYK in Illustrator or InDesign. See if you like the result.

    InDesign and Illustrator put way too much magenta into the conversion. This is just one example. This is an ongoing issue I would like to find an answer too.

    Am I missing something that will give me a better conversion (outside of passing a spot color to an external RIP and letting the external RIP convert the color)?

  • July 8, 2014 at 3:51 pm #69382
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Annette: Why not just make your own CMYK color swatch and call it Pantone 364 C ?

  • July 8, 2014 at 7:34 pm #69383
    Annette Murray

    Participant

    Please forgive this rather lengthy post.

    I am not creating these files. I work in prepress and I am receiving these files from clients. The Pantone 364 conversion is just one example. David, that’s exactly what we end up doing. Creating a custom CMYK swatch.

    But this can really becomes a nightmare when there are several parts to a project that are supplied over time. Once colors are manually tweaked for a better match care must be taken to use the same values on subsequent jobs; when a client resupplies a whole new file; when the job comes back six months or a year later, etc. etc.

    We have ten operators processing sometimes hundreds of jobs a week from thousands of clients outputting to several different devices. The new method of using LAB to convert is supposed to give better results. I have not seen better results. A couple times a week we DO create a custom CMYK color swatch because the Lab converted result is lousy. Quite often this isn’t recognized until after a hard proof has been produced.

    I am looking for a way to get better color right out of the gate when clients supply files with Pantone spot colors that will need to be converted to process. (And many of these clients are handing us PDFX1A pdfs that used this LAB method to convert the spot colors in their jobs BEFORE they give it to us. They unknowingly end up with less than the optimum results.)

    Am I missing something in the workflow that would produce better results? I am trying to get this LAB conversion to work the way it seems it is supposed to work. Or is only supposed to work in conjunction with a sophisticated RIP that does the conversion? Maybe Adobe’s intention is for the file to be handed to the RIP with the spot colors in tact; to let the RIP do the conversion? But why can’t Adobe software produce the same conversion that the RIPs do? What if a client supplies one pdf that they converted in InDesign and another with unconverted spot colors that we let the RIP convert. The color of the two pieces will not match.

    THIS IS WHAT I SEE IN ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR:
    The tool description when you select Use Lab values in Spot Color Options in Illustrator reads: “Use this to get the best possible match to the actual spot ink when spot colors are converted to process as part of a color-calibrated workflow”. I get the same conversion no matter what color working space I have selected.

    In addition, in Illustrator, under Spot Color options there is an alternative radio button that can be selected that reads: “Use CMYK values from the manufacturer’s process book.” When this option is selected no change takes place in the way spots are converted. Illustrator still appears to be using the Lab method. (Oh! Wait! Maybe Illustrator is trying to tell the operator to pick up a swatch book and type in the CMYK values that appear in the swatch book. Are these two radio buttons under Spot Color options just informational?)

    In my dream world all graphic designers use the TRUmatch system for 4-c jobs. (BTW, thank you, InDesignSecrets, for my shiny new TruMatch swatch book.)

  • July 9, 2014 at 9:24 am #69410
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Annette: Yes, I believe that Adobe switched over a couple of versions ago to using all Lab, whether or not that checkbox is turned on. I don’t have the official word on that, but it seems to be the case. So that checkbox is kind of like an appendix that doesn’t really mean anything anymore.

    I feel your pain, but I don’t think there is any better workflow. The lab conversion tables are supplied by Pantone to Adobe. Adobe doesn’t make them up! If your RIP does it differently, then perhaps they are not using the official Pantone conversion tables.

    Another possibility is that the CMYK values are being changed between InDesign and the RIP… this would be rare, but for example, if you export a PDF from InDesign (or print) with the Convert to Destination setting (instead of “Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers)” which is what people should normally use), then the CMYK values in ID will change to something else… called “cross-rendering the CMYK.” I doubt that you’re doing that, but I figured I should mention it.

    • March 25, 2025 at 9:12 am #14413141
      Rombout Versluijs

      Member

      Got be kidding me, 11 years later. Its still an appendix. It still shows in the swatch panel and still does nothing?!?!

  • July 10, 2014 at 5:20 am #69435
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    It also begs the question, why use PMS colours in the first place if the intention is CMYK output.
    Let us never forget that ink is gooey, analogue stuff, PMS gives the printer the tools to get the colour right, if CMYK is required instead then the ISO standards have given us all the tools to make that consistent too. They are different though, like apples and oranges.
    Any conversion from one to the other is an approximation, always will be even if Adobe and Pantone designated the LAB based figures, the gamut of what is possible with CMYK does not cover all PMS possibilities.

  • February 19, 2015 at 7:47 am #73407
    Christopher Robinson

    Member

    Ran across this and thought I would give you guys the correct answer from a commercial printer… Pantone spot swatches (pantone+ solid coated or solid uncoated books) should only be used when printing in spot color, they are not designed to print process but rather to look as much like the spot color as possible (thus the Lab definition). When designing to print in process you should use the “pantone+ color bridge” swatches. These colors are the closest approximation to the spot color that Pantone could create using CMYK. We see this every day, I wish Pantone had kept things the old way, it was much easier for the prepress guys! Your printer should be able to do a global change to fix the colors in the final pdf stage as we do daily…

    …another side note, if you are printing digital (Indigo etc..) leave it set to the spot definition. The rip in the indigo actually matches spots better than the color bridge definition from my experience.

  • March 3, 2015 at 3:13 am #73665
    Hans-Ole Nielsen

    Participant

    Looking at the numbers when you let Indesign/Illustrator/Acrobat do the conversation, in opposed to the Color Bridge table, it seams like the Color Bridge is working a lot with Key color compensation. – I do not know why. To save print cost? (Black being a lot cheaper than C-M-Y). Or does anyone have a better answer?

  • October 28, 2015 at 11:58 am #79058
    Ilsa Spaan

    Member

    SALIERI: I had the same problem, googled it, found this post and your answer was perfect. Thank you.

  • March 30, 2016 at 6:51 am #83476
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    You can also use color guides for refference.
    These color guide can be found at many places, like:
    https://designinfo.in/pantone-formula-guide-coated-uncoated/gp1601n-Buy-India-9.html

  • March 30, 2016 at 10:16 am #83492
    Ari Singer

    Member

    Why not use the Pantone Color Bridge guide to find the CMYK values that matches the Pantone color, and then execute a Find/Change query to change it to that CMYK swatch?

  • April 1, 2016 at 9:35 am #83651
    intoxicatedtokki

    Member

    This is great information! I am new to indesign and tend to work with a lot of color. I am glad I found this before I ran into this issue and got frustrated.

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