The next generation of adobe users now work among us

[WildWestDesigns]

I don't quite have that up beat "money quote" belief in that. The way tech is going, it's more abstraction, more scrapping and requiring less from the person to get further along. While that may do wonders for "efficiency", not so much in really stretching those creative muscles.

Ironically as well, the younger users are less adapt with newer tech as more and more is abstracted away from them (abstraction is a key thing here). As more and more things get abstracted, people know the abstraction the most and at some point, will have to pay the piper on that. The abstraction goes away for whatever reason, can they still get things done? That's where I really have to wonder about.

 

[Bobby H]

Regarding the original first post, the designer who chewed out JBurton should have known better about the Pantone thing a couple of years ago when the first warnings were issued. I made backups of the Pantone ACB files from Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Many other Adobe software users did the same thing.

When a new version of Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign is installed it won't include those Pantone spot color books. But backups of those ACB files can be pasted into the appropriate folder locations. The ACB files will work properly, but they won't have any newer colors Pantone has released.

For about a year it was possible for users to install a previous version of Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign and then make copies of those Pantone ACB files to copy into the new versions. Those old versions are no longer available in the Creative Cloud app. On the other hand various web sites have those ACB files posted here and there. Just be careful to avoid any malware while hunting for them.

One interesting note: while Pantone made Adobe remove its spot color libraries from their applications Pantone hasn't applied the same rules to CorelDRAW or Affinity Designer. Even more interesting, I can create artwork in CorelDRAW using Pantone spot colors not carried in Adobe's outdated color books, but when I export the artwork in Illustrator format and open it in Illustrator the spot colors are still preserved.

I've said it before in previous threads on this topic: Pantone hasn't been doing themselves any favors at all with this stunt involving Adobe. Their Connect software was buggy garbage when first released and it's seriously overpriced. $180 per year just for some color book files. And you have to spend around $200 more for actual printed spot color swatch books. If anything this crap will just encourage a lot of people to keep using old swatch books and old digital swatch libraries for years to come.

Pantone buys Canva, and only licences it to their new aquisition, and their fledgling rip software

Joking aside, Pantone is owned by X-Rite which was bought by Veralto Corporation in 2023. At least Veralto isn't a friggin' private equity company. Canva and the companies bought in its name (such as Serif recently) are owned by a private equity group. Under the current situation if any company bought the other I might expect Canva's owners to buy Veralto's properties.

 

[gnubler]

And you have to spend around $200 more for actual printed spot color swatch books. If anything this crap will just encourage a lot of people to keep using old swatch books and old digital swatch libraries for years to come.

I finally upgraded my 20 year old swatch books, it was time. Found brand new in box 2021 color books on eBay for a substantial savings. Good enough for me, and Pantone gets nothing.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

One interesting note: while Pantone made Adobe remove its spot color libraries from their applications Pantone hasn't applied the same rules to CorelDRAW or Affinity Designer.

Probably thought that since Adobe license out some of their 3rd party "technologies" (although I guess the Dolby fiasco taught them nothing) and given that they have a far greater share of this particular market and they make good use of SaaS, probably thought it would be a good pay day. Figured given market share and everything else around Corel and Serif, probably figured couldn't do the same thing and those that go to those particular products are already more concerned about "budget friendly" as it is.

 

[MNT_Printhead]

Adept means "good at doing something." Adapt means "to change for a new situation."
The More you know - star swoosh

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Adept means "good at doing something." Adapt means "to change for a new situation."
The More you know - star swoosh

College educated aggie, what do you expect.

 

[Bobby H]

Probably thought that since Adobe license out some of their 3rd party "technologies" (although I guess the Dolby fiasco taught them nothing) and given that they have a far greater share of this particular market and they make good use of SaaS, probably thought it would be a good pay day.

I think which ever "decider guy" at Pantone dreamed up this business strategy must have been spending a few nights sleeping in air-tight plastic cleaners bags before fever-dreaming up that ploy.

Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator are all very dominant in the specific graphics industry categories that make the most use of Pantone spot colors. The act of removing Pantone spot colors from stock installations of those applications is a great way of reducing Pantone's marketing visibility to a great deal of people who do print-related graphics work for a living.

If anything, Adobe could have demanded Pantone pay Adobe good money to bundle their palettes into Adobe's software. Let's face it, the palettes being there in the menus is like a subtle form of advertising.

Pantone's spokespeople whine that Adobe's palettes of Pantone colors were out of date. If it was up to Adobe's staffers to make the damned color books it's no wonder. What the hell was stopping Pantone from creating some proper ACB files for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign? It's arguably easier to create custom palettes in Adobe's applications than it is in rival applications. It is most certainly easier to find the damned palette files for Adobe's applications.

On that point, that might explain why Pantone is only targeting Adobe's software. They apparently don't know how to create custom swatch books for CorelDRAW, Affinity Designer or other applications. Corel and Serif both do not do anything to make it easy. I can find various program folders for CorelDRAW, but can't find locations where the stock color palettes are stored. The application data for Affinity Designer 2 is even harder to find.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Why I like programs that use the .gpl palettes. It's very easy to create those palettes (although it can be tedious if we are talking about large palettes without some type of automation). There was actually conversion from palettes of other programs to the .gpl format, I think there was in fact a repo for some of the pantone colors as well.

Thankfully, I never had to deal with the Pantone issue as far as matching goes. With what I did, most people didn't expect there to be matching available (and to be honest there was only one company that hocked that feature, that may have changed now).

 

[Bobby H]

GPL palettes are a GIMP and Inkscape thing. I suppose various fanboys can craft their own custom palettes of Pantone spot colors. But it's going to be their own judgments (or guesses) on RGB-CMYK-L*a*b values with how those palettes work rather than getting the legit values from people at Pantone.

It might be nice to be in a daily work flow arrangement where Pantone spot color matching is not a consideration. Unfortunately most sign shops are required to some degree to match Pantone spot colors due to client demands. Those demands get much more strict when dealing with bigger companies with greater national or international reach. Pantone spot colors are an extremely common feature of corporate branding.

To compound the situation worse, Adobe and Pantone have their current embargo arrangement against each other. Nevertheless, big companies spec out their official colors using Pantone spot color standards (rather than any rival color library such as Toyo or Trumatch). And then these same companies build out their corporate branding assets using those Pantone spot colors but also features in Adobe Illustrator that don't export so well to rival applications. Effects involving gradients and transparency (or combinations of both) do NOT export well outside of Illustrator. Illustrator has certain transparency modes that can't be duplicated in CorelDRAW or Affinity Designer. That doesn't even bring in issues like gradients on line strokes, freeform gradients, etc.

If I'm going to create a logo for someone I'm going to want that artwork to be as "portable" as possible. I'm going to want it to render accurately in a lot of different software environments. Other people creating "logos" don't think like that. They just bake in whatever feature they like into the artwork regardless of what problems in might cause in production. These younger people haven't had to put up with the hang-ups I've had to endure -or at least they're so young they haven't run into those problems YET.