Pantone

The Pantone company, headquartered in Carlstadt, NJ, has been setting the standard for universal color systems and calibrations for over 40 years with their Pantone Matching System (PMS). It ensures uniform color accuracy from the computer monitor to the final print-out, with exact results.

Supported by all graphic design software packages including but not limited to Photoshop, Illustrator and QuarkXPress, Pantone has become the undeniable necessity in the print industry, especially since it is also an international standard.

By classifying and assigning numbers to hundreds of colors and shades, Pantone was able to monopolize the color matching and calibration niche with a multitude of color classifications that run the full spectrum.

Since Pantone colors are needed to verify color in person, tangible products are available that allow you to compare a Pantone color to a real life object so that you can determine the closest match. They come in two forms: Pantone chips and swatch books.

• Pantone Chips come in a small binder with several "squares" of each Pantone color that are perforated and removable. You can then paper-clip a swatch to your print material and send it to the printing company as a reference. Alternately, you can remove swatches and compare them to each other, or to objects.


• Pantone Swatch Books are wide, rectangular shaped, thick "fan-out" booklets displaying the full range of Pantone colors. They allow you to fan out the swatch pages, hold them up to a screen or printout, and compare colors by eye. These are typically the more popular products, since swatch chips tend to get lost and used up, prompting you to buy a replacement page or book.

Professional printing companies typically buy swatch booklets every year (Pantone updates their swatches annually) for accurate and up-to-date color representation. They do this because fluorescent lights and the sun can alter swatch colors. Don't worry though: unless your swatches have extreme and constant exposure to light, you will never notice this. Since you probably don't want to buy a new book for yourself every year, It's always recommended that you keep your swatch book in a closed drawer when not used.

When choosing the proper Pantone swatch book for your purposes, you'll have to think about the type of paper you'll be printing on. Paper is also called "stock" and is measured by its thickness in "pounds" or "#." Pantone offers separate books based upon different paper types, because a single color will look differently on multiple textures of paper. The basic types are outlined below:

• Coated: Coated paper is treated with a compound to make it appear smooth to the touch, glossy, or shiny. Ink painted on the surface of coated paper generally looks rich and vibrant. It usually has ultraviolet protection to help prevent fading. Most corporate brochures, folders and high-quality mail-outs use coated paper.


• Uncoated: Uncoated paper does not have any kind of coating, and tends to absorb ink more than coated paper. Newspapers and circulars use uncoated paper. Uncoated paper does not have a shine or gloss on its surface when read under a ceiling light.


• Matte: Matte paper is mostly favored for artistic lithograph printing or photographic prints, as it has a flat, smooth feel with a great ability to display accurate color representations. It has a very slick and
  extremely smooth surface, and is also an very
  fragile paper type that tears easily.

Beyond the standard ink types, Pantone also offers swatch sets based on specialty inks that are set apart from the standard spectrum of colors, due to their unique applications. They include:

Pantone Metallic Swatches: Metallic ink represents shades of silver, gold, bronze and other colors. Although they appear to be flat-shaded on a computer screen, they wind up printing with a shimmering effect, due to the fact that special metal filings are mixed into the ink itself.

Pantone Pastel Swatches: Pastel colors are soft and "powdery" in appearance and typically associated with the Spring season. Pantone has released a separate booklet just for pastels.

Pantone Tints: An interesting and new inclusion, which shows you the tint variations of basic spot colors from 10% to 80% lighter. They indicate what a color looks like when tinted, so that no guesswork is needed on behalf of the designer.

So far, we've gone through the different kinds of colors (RGB, CMYK and Spot) as well as the different kinds of paper (Uncoated, Coated and Matte). However, there's a missing link: the actual calibration of the printer you're using.

As a printer goes through its normal operation, its print heads become dirty, and in some cases (especially with high-end, expensive Giclée printers), the link lines need to be bled of air bubbles. All of these things lead to inaccurate color representations. To remedy, clean your print heads regularly: a simple wipe of the copper contact on an inkjet will suffice.

Once that's done, be sure to run your printer's calibration test. This will allow it to print a spectrum and various shades of grayscale in order to verify that colors and tones are accurate, and lines are matched up properly. Do this before every print job!

In field work, print production specialists use hand-held calibration devices to ensure that their Pantone colors are matching up properly. These devices can pointed and held down on a real-life object (or even directly against a computer monitor), and information about that color "feeds" into the computer after a few seconds, identifying color accuracy.