Ok as a designer I know it would be great to invest in Pantone Charts. But at the current moment I do not have the funds to do this.

So I'm wondering is there an online resource that has the pantone color charts or is there a way to get the pantone colors in PS/AI.

Ok both PS and Illustrator have pantone swatch libraries.

What are you trying to do? Match a colour, design a spot colour file?

Well I just want to design a personal business card... and through my stupidty I went with a photoshop color and it was brought to my attention that where ever I get it printed might now be able to match that color. So I'm going to stick with pantones so I don't have that problem. I'll check out the swatch libraries.. there is always something new I learn with those programs.. :).

Oh in case you were wondering I'm doing the concept in Photoshop and doing the final in Illustrator.

How will this be printed? Full colour, Spot colour , Laser Printer.

Pantone makes different swatch libraries for different things. As long as you picked a CMYK colour in PS and you have a calibrated monitor then you should be able to match that with 4 colour (full colour/process) printing. If you didn't have a calibrated monitor (or swatches to look at) then picking a pantone colour is going to be pointless as well because the print won't match the screen.

If you are doing spot colour printing then you will want to use the Pantone spot/solid colour swatches, that come in three kinds for different paper stocks; Coated, Uncoated and Matte. The colour from the 3 different libraries are all the same colour but show how those particular colours look on different stocks. You need to pick the right one to use depending on what stock you will be printing on. There are also Metallic colours that have their own swatch library.

Again if you are just using the screen for reference then more than likely the print won't match the screen. Even a perferctly calibrated monitor won't display all CMYK/Spot colours properly as they don't all fit into the RGB colour gammut which you monitor uses.

Picking a spot colour in PS is useless unless you are creating a spot colour channel; otherwise PS just convert whatever spot colour you picked and converts it to whatever colour mode your document is in (CMYK, RGB, Lab).

Typically you can come pretty close by using you monitor. Colours like blues and oranges are the worst to pick by monitor because these are the hardest to print.

printing > me I'm an idiot when it comes to the printing aspects of design... I haven't had the class yet :)

Either way

The Pantone Ultimate Survival Kit

is...


well ultimate :D

Either way

The Pantone Ultimate Survival Kit

is...


well ultimate :D

Yeah I have two one at my home office and one where I work.

The metallic book is really nice as well and I would like to have the duotone book but you can't have evrything I guess.