PANTONE has done it again: Following the changes from 2010 to 2014, PANTONE is now expanding its Solid Coated and Solid Uncoated palette with 112 new colours. For users of the current Solid Plus Series, PANTONE is offering a fan with the new colours in Coated and Uncoated as an extension for 30 Euros. And of course PANTONE also offers updated Solid Coated and Solid Uncoated and Bridget fans … and of course an updated version of all associated libraries.

The reason for the 112 new colours is not entirely clear. PANTONE writes vaguely, “112 industry-desired and inspiring spot colours to complement our existing collection” and “The 112 new spot colours are market-relevant, focusing on specific desired colour ranges that offer designers the most advanced and inspiring colour options for creative design application, expression, communication and specification.”
Let’s be honest: Positively phrased, this does not sound like a convincing colourimetric concept. So it is not surprising that on the American website there is a dazzling image film with designers who really wanted these colours. Due to a lack of relevance this film was probably not even offered in German …
Still, the new colours are here, and designers, graphic artists and printers are called upon to deal with them. The libraries in the PANTONE Color Manager are already updated, and the colours are also available online in PANTONE.
At the moment we do not have the colours available in LAB via FIERY in the system, but due to the published colour values we can proof the colours in sRGB or CMYK variants. We have already completed a first order – so the colours seem to be not completely irrelevant for the industry after all.
Even almost 9 years after the introduction of the successor colour space PSOCoatedV3, ISOCoatedV2 / FOGRA39 is still the most widespread colour space in Europe. We at Proof GmbH count around 200 jobs from time to time for the German Printing and Media Industries Federation, among others. In the last count, proofs in ISOCoatedV2 accounted for around 68% of all proof jobs at our company. This is a clear sign of the continued widespread use of the colour space. ISOCoatedV2: From the classic colour space to the beacon of the … read more
Digimarc is a digital watermark that can be used to embed information in images, videos or other media. Digimarc watermarks are invisible to the human eye, but remain recognisable to special software or devices. Digimarc is becoming increasingly popular in the packaging sector in particular, as this technology allows the digits of the EAN barcode and more to be applied invisibly to all areas of the packaging. Digimarc and EAN barcode at the supermarket checkout When scanning at the checkout, the checkout staff do not have to search for the … read more
After Eddy Hagen pointed out in this posts, that there were some major colour deviations between the brand new PANTONE Solid Coated Guide 2023 and the previous version especially for the PANTONE 2635 C, I was curious to lookup the same colours in the new PANTONE Color Bridge Coated Guide of 2023 and compare the colours with the previous version. I measured a dE00 of 8,15 between the two colours that Eddy mentioned, which is really far apart from how accurate PANTONE colours should match between the different PANTONE guides. … read more
Anyone who has reinstalled or updated their i1 Profiler app in the last few weeks has been confronted with disturbing news: X-Rite announced directly in the start window that it would no longer support its enormously popular i1Display and i1Pro2 devices. Users of the i1Pro 2 devices and i1iO 2 tables, which are extremely popular in printing and colour management, will be particularly hard hit by the announcement: An investment of €6,000 is quickly consigned to the electronic scrap heap. But what can you do if you own such a … read more
A few days ago Proof GmbH was the first company to be certified for proofing for the new 7C exchange colour space FOGRA55. Fogra has developed characterisation data for extended multicolour printing with the printing colours CMYKOGV – i.e. cyan, magenta, yellow, black (contrast), orange, green and violet – FOGRA55 as part of a research project over the past few years. The characterisation data and the ICC profile Ref-ECG-CMYKOGV_FOGRA55_TAC300.icc have been published on the Fogra website in recent weeks. We have now carried out the certification via GMG ColorProof, as … read more
In the current issue of Fogra News “Fogra Aktuell” Proof GmbH is involved in two places. Firstly, a summary of the Fogra report on our first FOGRA55 certification for seven-colour printing with extended colour space in CMYKOGV appeared. You can also find more information on our FOGRA55 certification on the Fogra website: https://fogra.org/en/press-releases/fogracert-erste-cpc-zertifizierung-fuer-fogra55-cmykogv-330 and on proofing.de: And secondly, there was a report on the completion of the research project for textile digital printing, FOGRA58, in which we were allowed to investigate and test the proof capability of the new textile … read more
Peter Jäger is an expert in colour management that reliably works across the boundaries of printers and monitors, web and print – essentially: cross-media.
In recent years, various problems have arisen with our previous proof paper supplier. On the one hand, we sometimes had to wait more than three months for paper deliveries; on the other hand, we sometimes had significant problems with batch-to-batch discrepancies, surface defects and much more. After lengthy deliberations, we decided in December to replace all the paper. We therefore received pallets of new paper at the turn of the year, which we are now gradually incorporating into our production. There will be no hard cut, but the new papers … read more
In recent weeks, there have been lengthy discussions on the Fogra digital printing mailing list as to whether a research project should be launched to define standardised tonal value gradations for spot colours. What is this all about? In the field of CMYK and seven-colour printing, the definition of clear, printable and proofable standards is well established and has been tried and tested in practice. If the paper or paper class is known and defined, a measuring standard such as M0/M1/M2 has been established and the content of optical brighteners … read more
Several errors have crept into the new PANTONE 2023 fan decks. In both the PANTONE Solid Coated and the Solid Uncoated color fans, there are colours for which the new ink formulations are incorrect. In the PANTONE Formula Guide Solid Coated fan 2023, PANTONE 107 C and PANTONE 108 C have absolutely identical ink recipes, as well as PANTONE 113 C and PANTONE 114 C. As the colors differ, this cannot be the correct. Several errors in the PANTONE Solid Uncoated fan 2023 In the PANTONE Solid Uncoated fan 2023 … read more