You now have to pay to use fancy colors in Photoshop

Chances are you don’t give much thought to where the digital colors you use originally came from. Or, perhaps, you’ve wondered who “owns” a certain color when you selected it while creating something in Photoshop. But a lot of people are going to give it a huge amount of their attention, because the licensing changes between Adobe and Pantone make their collection of PSD files full of unwanted black.

As of now, widely used Adobe apps such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign no longer support Pantone’s proprietary colors for free, and those who want to see these colors in their saved files must pay for a separate license. And this is real life.

Pantone has been around since the 1950s, a New Jersey company originally refining printing inks, then inventing the Pantone Color Matching System, used by designers worldwide to ensure the color of a creation is exactly as desired, no matter where or how it is made. why not So, of course, to become the industry-standard for color-matching, the company naturally claims ownership of all 2,161 of its colors, protecting its intellectual property and preventing unlicensed use. This extends from creating “pans” to blocking otherstone-consistent” color system. Or, to put it another way, they claim their own colors.

Last year’s announcement That Adobe will remove the Pantone “color book” from its software Design has brought panic to the world. Moving from one industry standard to another was clearly going to cause problems, but at the time Adobe said it would “work on an alternative solution”, while rumors swirled that the companies had fallen out.

Since then, the official reasons given have not made much sense. According to Pantone, the two companies began working together in the 1990s, but “as of 2010, the Pantone color libraries within Adobe’s apps have not been updated.” This, apparently, means they are “significantly outdated and missing hundreds of new Pantone colors.” (Yes, the company seriously capitalizes on “color”.) It means, “Pantone and Adobe have decided together to remove outdated libraries and jointly focus on an improved in-app experience that better serves our users.”

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The removal of Pantone’s colors from Adobe’s software was meant to happen March 31 this year, but that date came and went. It was then due for August 16, then August 31. However, this month, people are noticing the effects, reporting issues with creations using Pantone’s spot colors. And the solution? It’s an Adobe plug-in to “minimize workflow disruption and to provide the updated libraries to the Adobe Creative Cloud users.” Which, of course, costs $15 a month. It’s Netflix, but for coloring in!

However, Pantone still states in its Out-of-date FAQ That, “This update will have minimal impact on a designer’s workflow. Existing Creative Cloud files and documents containing references to Pantone colors will retain those color identities and information.” Yet today, People are reporting that their Photoshop is telling them“This file contains Pantone colors that have been removed and replaced with black due to Pantone’s licensing changes with Adobe.”

Others have reported Even attaching a Pantone license within Photoshop doesn’t solve the problem, colors are still replaced by black and the solutions sound like a pain.

We’ve contacted both Pantone and Adobe, and will update either should we get back to you.

We, as a species, are in a very interesting time when it comes to so-called “intellectual property”. Since the rules that apply to physical objects were poorly imposed on digital items, usually controlled by those who could spend and lose the most money, we’ve seen this kind of nonsense spread from music to movies to digital art, and now they come in many colors. . Made by ourselves again. And it always seems to end in us paying more.

Paying for aspects of free services is becoming more common BMW Some people charge for heated seats.

But there is a solution to this particular problem. Not least to free yourself from the plight of such closed software, where ridiculous situations are capable of breeding like rabbits. There is free software like this GimpAnd like free, open color schemes open color. Of course, moving away from industry standards always introduces difficulties, but then, if we all do this, these problems will go away very quickly.

If you need or want to stick to Adobe projects, there are solutions out there too. Free ones. Watch the video below for one.

Another tip suggested by Print week Backing up your Pantone libraries, then re-importing them to remove them when your Adobe software updates, or if it’s too late, finding a friend who already has. Pantone colors have a better chance of working if they are saved as .ACB files, just like the rest of Photoshop’s colors.

oh you know You can just copy the metadata value of the Pantone range.