How to Specify a Pantone Color
Whether you're working on a print advertisement and are trying to match your paint color to the product label, or are creating a letterhead while attempting to match a company's branded color to your ink color--making use of Pantone coloring can greatly help your work. Pantone coloring is a color-matching system where every conceivable hue (including transparencies and opaques) is assigned a number, and (in most cases) one or multiple letters. To specify your exact required Pantone color, you can use both free programs that come with your computer, such as Microsoft Paint, and more robust packages--like Adobe Photoshop.
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Instructions
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Using Paint
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Check your Pantone color specification against an online color conversion chart (see Resources for Zeald link). Look up the Pantone color and jot down the three "R," "G," and "B" colors noted on the chart.
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Double-click any colored box in the "Color Picker" at the bottom of the Paint screen, then click the "Define Custom Colors" button. When the rainbow section of the screen opens, type the numbers you wrote down into the "Red," "Green," and "Blue" boxes, and click "Add to Custom Colors." The new color appears under the "Custom Colors" section.
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Click the "OK" button, then begin drawing or use the "Fill" tool, which paints in the Pantone color.
Using Photoshop
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4
Open Photoshop and click "File," then click "New" or "Open" to bring up your document. Double-click the top left colored square in the "Color Picker" on the "Tools" palette on the left side of the screen. The "Color Picker" is the two overlapping squares.
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Click the "Custom" button on the "Color Picker" window. Pull down the "Book" drop-down menu and select one of the Pantone color libraries. Note that the slider bar in the middle of the screen goes from the lowest number to the highest, with the exception of the very bottom colors, which are low black numbers.
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6
Type the exact Pantone number if you know it and it will auto-adjust to the color. Click the "OK" button when you have the correct color.
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Click one of the tools in the palette, such as the paintbrush, pencil or paint can, to color with the specified Pantone color.
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Tips & Warnings
Never try to eyeball Pantone color from your computer screen. Screens are all calibrated differently and the brightness of your monitor can serve to throw off how the color looks. Always go by the exact Pantone color number.
