Heads up: Pantone specs out of date on CS2 and earlier

[Blue Velvet]

Anyone still using CS or CS2? Including InDesign and Illustrator? Or even earlier versions of the individual apps?

Apparently...

During a conversation this month with Doris Brown, Pantone’s marketing head, I learned that InDesign CS2 shipped with Pantone color specifications that were out of date not long after CS2 was released. It seems that when InDesign CS2 started shipping in May 2005, it used Pantone color specifications that were revised shortly thereafter by Pantone. As far as I know, the change was not rectified in future copies of InDesign CS2. Now that CS3 has been released this will soon become obsolete news, but many people will be using InDesign CS2 for some time to come so it’s a noteworthy deficiency. The good news is that there is a fix available at the Pantone website.

http://quarkvsindesign.com/articles/a1/news/2007/pantone-colors-in-indesign-cs2-outdated/




The free fix?

Log in/register here:
http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/pantone.aspx?ca=1&pg=19422

You will need to be a myPANTONE member, but this is a free membership and can be created at the same webpage. Once you are logged in, you can download the PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE® application that loads the Pantone color specifications to several applications including InDesign 2.0–CS2, Illustrator 9–CS2, Photoshop 6–CS2, and some versions of Freehand, CorelDRAW and QuarkXPress.

I also have to pettily note that:

QuarkXPress 6, by the way, did ship with the correct Pantone color specifications.

This might also go some way towards explaining the discrepancies I noted in this thread a few weeks ago.

 

[iMeowbot]

Thanks for hunting this down. There is also a bit of other version-specific weirdness with the way Pantone values are converted that is with knowing about. (Adobe tech note)

 

[decksnap]

In what type of situation would this problem rear it's head? I haven't noticed any general problems, wondering what I should be looking for. We've been on CS1 for years. Probably not much longer though.

 

[Blue Velvet]

In what type of situation would this problem rear it's head?

Found this longer piece about the issue today. It's a Word document but here's the Google HTML version.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Tp7wCgF3kXMJ:www.gammag.com/WhitePapers/doc/PANTONE_bridge.doc

 

[kitki83]

Wow that explains a lot why CMYK colors of the logos in my job are accurate while the pantone are slightly off. I never knew this and its sad the issue was never brought out more (design magazines, email, patches) that it lasted this long. Thanks for the post printed this out for good reading.