Pantone is asking $15 a month for the right to use their colors in Photoshop

If you want to use the latest versions of Adobe Creative Cloud apps, you’ve been paying for a subscription for years. And if you want to use Pantone colors in Adobe apps, it gets even more expensive. Starting this month, Pantone color books in Adobe apps are mostly gone, and you will need the new Pantone Connect extension to continue using these colors in your files.

Using this extension is free after creating an account, but using the full library of colors, creating unlimited color palettes, and “dozens more tools to create smarter and more efficient palettes”will now require a subscription, which will cost $15 each. per month or $90 per year on top of what you’re already paying for Adobe apps. I could view colors using the base version of the extension, but trying to view and select most colors from most libraries prompted me to pay for a subscription.

Fun times ahead for #Adobe designers. Today, if you open a PSD (even one that is 20 years old) with an obscure PANTONE color, it will remove the color and make it black. Pantone is asking $21/month for access, and Solid Coated will be turning off paywalls in early November. pic.twitter.com/BUxzViYFaQ

October 28, 2022

This change appears to be rolling out gradually. Some users have already encountered Photoshop error messages informing them of the change and that Pantone colors in older Photoshop files are being replaced with black when they are opened in newer versions of the software. Adobe says the Pantone Solid Coated and Solid Uncoated libraries will be removed “after November 2022”, leaving only the CMYK Coated, CMYK Uncoated and Metallic Coated Pantone libraries.

On a MacBook Air M1 with the most recent version of Photoshop, I can still access all of the Pantone color libraries as before, including the Solid Coated and Solid Uncoated libraries, which are presumably gone. (Adding an insult to Mac users, the current version of the Pantone Connect extension is not compatible with Apple Silicon and requires the app to run in slower Intel emulation mode.)

According to Pantone, Adobe has not updated the Pantone color libraries in its applications for over a decade, leading to the mass removal of older libraries from Adobe applications in favor of the Pantone Connect Extension. But the communication on this issue has been confusing, with inconsistent and changing start dates for the removal of existing Pantone libraries, and different pricing data depending on the source you’re viewing. A Pantone FAQ and review earlier this year lists a Pantone Connect subscription price of $8/month or $60/year, much lower than the prices listed on the plugin’s product page.

This Pantone FAQ also claims that “existing Creative Cloud files and documents containing references to Pantone colors will retain these color identifiers and information”, a claim that seems to contradict Adobe’s licensing error message. For its part, Adobe’s FAQ states that versions of its apps released prior to August 2022 “will continue to have all previous Pantone color books preloaded and available.”

As a last resort, this means you can use Creative Cloud’s “other versions”feature to install an older version of your apps that can still see and work with Pantone colors as before (Photoshop 23.4, InDesign 17.3, and Illustrator 26.4 seem earlier ones). most recent versions prior to August 2022).

This is just a temporary measure; Adobe doesn’t offer older versions of its apps indefinitely. But for people who don’t use Pantone colors extensively or regularly, this may allow you to open and modify your files so you don’t end up with darkened colors in your images. Others have suggested that manually copying these Pantone color libraries from older versions of apps and re-adding them to newer versions may also be a workaround for some users.

We’ve contacted Adobe about all the conflicting information we’ve come across: the exact date that users can expect to see these changes; whether colors will be removed from old files or whether they will remain unchanged; and whether any missing colors can be restored by installing the Pantone Connect plugin (which we can’t test because Pantone colors still work fine on our end). We’ll update the article if we get any clarification.