Adobe Photoshop now requires a subscription for Pantone colors

Adobe has removed support for Pantone colors in its Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator Creative Cloud apps last week. PSD files containing Pantone spot colors are now displayed in black. Creatives who require access to industry-standard color books will have to purchase a plugin subscription (via Kotaku).

“As we had June, sharedPantone made a decision to alter its business model. Some of the Pantone Color Books that are pre-loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were phased-out from future software updates in August 2022,” said Erin Di Leva, Public Relations Manager for Adobe in a statement to The Verge. “To access the complete set of Pantone Color Books, Pantone now requires customers to purchase a premium license through Pantone Connect and install a plug-in using Adobe Exchange.”

Prior to the introduction of the Pantone Color Matching System, companies used individual color guides which gave inconsistent results as each ink company could interpret “red” as slightly differing shades. Even CMYK is considered inferior because of the requirement for a combination of cyan and magenta as well as yellow and black. Pantone doesn’t require a combination of colors, making it more reliable for designers working on large projects.

The following are some of the highlights. FAQ for Pantone states that “existing Creative Cloud files and documents containing Pantone Color references will keep those color identities and information,” Photoshop users are nevertheless reporting that The old PSD files that were created using Pantone colors are now shown as black. “This file has Pantone colors that have been removed and replaced with black due to changes in Pantone’s licensing with Adobe,” reads a message on affected projects. Other Photoshop users have reported that downloading the Pantone Connect extension isn’t guaranteed to fix the issue. We’ve reached out to Pantone to clarify its position and will provide an update should we hear back.