Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and I made a video a few weeks ago about how
Adobe is discontinuing Pantone color. So in this video, I'm going to show you a workaround so you
can download your colors for InDesign, then you can use the Pantone Connect Extension,
which part of it is free, to get any new colors that you need. Now, when I released that video a
couple of weeks ago, some people rightfully mentioned that this could be a problem,
and it could be against Pantone's licensing terms. And that is definitely a valid concern, because
I don't want to break any licensing terms, and I do not condone anyone to do so. So I went out
to Google to see what I could find. And really, I came up with nothing. So then my next step was to
reach out to Pantone, the company, directly. And after our kind of a long email exchange,
I finally ended up with this. So you can just pause your video for a second and read it if
you like. But basically, if you want to rename swatches, to Pantone colors, that's ok, but
you have to do two things, or at least two things need to be in place. First, someone in the process
has to own Pantone color books or guides. That way they can go off the name of the color instead of
the RGB colors within it. If you're used to using pantones, it's generally the case that someone
involved has a color book that they can compare the final color to. You might own them yourself,
your printer should own the Pantone color guides, or the company you work for might own them. So
this makes total sense to me. The second thing you need to do is convey to your printer that this is
just a placeholder swatch or a representative swatch. It is not Pantone's actual swatch,
even though it's renamed Pantone 212 or whatever. So you could add this somewhere like in the slug
of your document, or in an email to the printer. So if you're doing those two things, it's okay to
rename your swatches to Pantone colors. And that's according to Pantone, the company, so I'm pretty
sure it's legit. All right, let's go ahead and get into InDesign so you can see how to do this.
Ok, so first, we need to get the Pantone Connect Extension, so that we can look up the new colors
that are not currently in Adobe programs. So I'll just search for Pantone Connect,
and here it is right here. You'll want to look for the exchange.adobe.com one. And I'll also leave a
link in the description below. You'll need to sign in with your Adobe account, then just hit Install,
and then Okay, and it's probably going to ask you to close all the Adobe programs that you currently
have open. So do that and then open InDesign back up. Now we can come up here to Window>Extensions
and >Pantone Connect. You'll actually have to create an account for this. You'll need to do like
the normal email verification and all that. I've already done all that and I've already signed in.
You'll probably have to do like a one question survey. But anyway, here we are. Now Pantone
Connect is a paid extension. And it's $7.99 a month, or you can get a cheaper rate if you
sign up for a whole year. So on this free version, there's only one thing that works. Everything else
is going to make you pay. So the thing that works is underneath Colors right here, and it's Pick.
I can click up here at the top and choose Formula Guide Coated. That's going to be your spot color
inks on coated paper. So it's like solid coded. So I'll click on that one. And here we see all
the colors in here. We can come over here and just make our chip size small. And you can also
search for a specific color here. So if you just want to search for 212, for example,
it'll bring up Pantone 212 C, just like it does when you normally search. The problem is we have
this little color picker, but it doesn't work. If I click it, it'll try to get me to sign up
for a 30-day free trial, which is just like every other subscription. You'll have to pay eventually.
So we'll go back to free. So let's go back to our Pantone 212. Instead of clicking on it,
I'm just going to take a screenshot of this. On a Mac that's SHIFT CTRL CMD 4, and then just
draw over the part you want. And that takes a copy screenshot. Now we can come over here to File>New
Document. Any document is ok, and just Paste, and this will paste the color that we need.
On a Windows machine, for Windows 10 and newer, you can press SHIFT then the Windows key and S and
all the options or screengrabs come up on the top of your screen. One of them is Select a Region.
And once you've done that, it'll copy it just like we did here. It copies it to your clipboard,
and then you can just paste it in the document, or you can click the notification to open what
you grabbed and save it as a file. I don't really think you need to do that. You can just paste it
in. Ok, so now that it's on the artboard, I can use my Eyedropper tool which is right over here
to click on that, and it will give us the pink color right here. So I'm going to minimize Pantone
Connect. It puts it right down here. Now I've got my swatches open. If you're not seeing that, you
can just go to Window>Color and >Swatches here. Now we'll want to go to the flyout and choose New
Color Swatch. And it's going to automatically name it the color value, but you can just unclick that.
And then you'll want to name it the actual Pantone name. And we want to change this to a spot color,
because all these Pantone colors in solid coated are spot colors. So you're probably thinking,
well, that's not exact, but that's actually okay, because what's on your screen is just going to be
a representation anyway. Everybody's screen is going to show this color a little differently. A
printer needs to be able to match this Pantone 212 to a Pantone book. And actually, you as a designer
should have your own Pantone books, so that you'll know exactly what color 212 really is. It's not
just the color you see on your screen. I actually have another video about how Pantone colors work,
and that should be up at the top of your screen right now if you want to check it out.
So anyway, we've got our Pantone swatch name in there, color type is Spot and we'll just say
Add, and then it shows up in our swatch list right here and we can use it like normal.
Now as you probably noticed, that can be a pretty cumbersome process. So I'd really only do this
process if you're needing new colors that you can't find in the current version of InDesign.
But I don't know what's going to happen after March. I don't know if your Pantone color books
will even still be in here. I'm guessing that they won't be. So what I would do now is just to make
your own Pantone Swatch Library from the existing swatches that are in there. So if you watched my
video about how to do it in Illustrator, you can just navigate to that ASE file that we saved in
Illustrator, and it will open all the swatches here in InDesign too, which is pretty sweet.
But if you haven't done that yet, I can show you how to do it here in InDesign. So I'm going to
come up here to the flyout and choose Select All Unused, and then we'll just trash these. Next,
you'll want to come up here to the flyout and choose New Color Swatch. We'll go to the
Color Mode. I'm going to use Pantone Solid Coated because that's the one I normally use. We'll want
to change our color type to Spot. And then we'll go all the way up to the top of the color list
and choose the first one. Go all the way down to the bottom, hold SHIFT and choose the last one,
and then come over here to Add. Now this can take some time because there are a lot of colors in
there, so you might get the spinning wheel for a little bit. Anyway, we're going to say Done.
And now all of those swatches are in our swatch panel. And I probably should have done this in the
first place, but I'll go ahead and put these in a color group. So I'm selecting the first one, going
all the way to the bottom, and then holding SHIFT. And then I'm going to click this little folder
down here called New Color Group. I'm going to call this Pantone Solid Coated. And we'll
create from Selected Swatches. And we'll say OK. So now we have a folder with all those in there.
And now they can kind of stay out of the way and they won't get mixed in with our other swatches.
So if you want all of them, you're going to repeat that process for every different Pantone book
that InDesign has in it. Now I'll select my color group. I'll come over here to the flyout
and choose Save Swatches. I'm going to save this one as Solid Coated2. You can see I practiced this
a few times. Then I'll get rid of that. And I want to show you how to load them.
So if we restart InDesign, I can come up here to the flyout, choose Load Swatches, and then choose
the Solid Coated2. Now because this is a lot of swatches, it might take a second to load. But
here they are. And if we toggle this down, we can see all those Pantones in there. Now if you need
to search in here, unfortunately, that is going to be an issue. So if you wanted to just type in
212, that isn't going to work. You're going to have to scroll through these. And that's something
that is unique to InDesign. In Illustrator and Photoshop, you can come over here and choose Show
Find Field. It will put a little search bar here, and you can just type in the number you need. But,
unfortunately, it does not exist here in InDesign as far as I know. But loading them this way
is better than nothing. So that takes care of all the older colors. For any new colors that
you want to use, you can use Pantone Connect to just screenshot those like I showed you before.
Or the other option is paying $7 a month for the Pantone Connect Extension, which is probably way
easier, but it's also really buggy from what I've heard. For me that just doesn't make sense because
I don't use pantones very much at all anymore. But if you do, it might be worth it. If you do want to
buy it, I actually plan to make a video soon about how to use the Pantone Connect Extension, the paid
version, so keep an eye out for that. If you liked this video and you want to see more videos
like this, just hit the subscribe button and the little bell next to it, and you'll be notified
every time a new video comes out. All right, I'll see you in the next video. Thank you!!!