Pantone Inc. is a corporation headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, USA. Carlstadt is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. New Jersey ( is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, though sometimes in the manufacture of colored paint, fabric and plastics. The word proprietary indicates that a party or proprietor exercises private Ownership, control or use over an item of Property. A Color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way Colors can be represented as Tuples of numbers typically as three or four values or color components

On 23 August 2007, X-Rite Inc, a supplier of color measurement instruments and software, announced it had reached an agreement to purchase Pantone Inc for $180 million. X-Rite Inc is a manufacturer of color matching products located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States. The deal was completed in October 2007^[1].

Overview

Pantone, as it is today, was founded in 1962, when the company—at the time a small business that manufactured color cards for cosmetics companies—was bought by Lawrence Herbert, who had been an employee since 1956. He immediately changed its direction, developing the first color matching system in 1963. Herbert remains the CEO, Chairman, and President of the company.

The company's primary products include the Pantone Guides, which consist of a large number of small (approximately 6×2 inches or 15×5 cm) thin cardboard sheets, printed on one side with a series of related color swatches and then bound into a small flipbook. Paperboard is a Paper -like material usually over ten mils (0 For instance, a particular "page" might contain a number of yellows of varying tints. “Tint” redirects here For other uses see Tint (disambiguation In Color theory, a tint is the mixture of a Color with

The idea behind the PMS is to allow designers to 'color match' specific colors when a design enters production stage—regardless of the equipment used to produce the color. This system has been widely adopted by graphic designers, reproduction and printing houses for a number of years now. Pantone recommends that PMS Color Guides be purchased annually as their inks become more yellow over time. ^[2] Color variance also occurs within editions based on the paper stock used (coated, matte or uncoated), while inter-edition color variance occurs when there are changes to the specific paper stock used. ^[3]

Original Pantone Color Matching System

A Solid Matte Formula Guide from Pantone, 2005 edition.

The Pantone Color Matching System is largely a standardized color reproduction system. By standardizing the colors different manufactures in different locations can all refer to a the Pantone system to make sure colors match without direct contact with one another.

One such use is standardizing colors in the CMYK process. CMYK (short for '''c'''yan, '''m'''agenta, '''y'''ellow, and k ey ( Black) and often referred to as process color The CMYK process method of printing color by using four inks—cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The vast majority of the world's printed material is produced using the CMYK process, and there is a special subset of Pantone colors that can be reproduced using CMYK. Those that are possible to simulate through the CMYK process are labeled as such within the company's guides.

However, most of the Pantone system's 1,114 spot colors cannot be simulated with CMYK but with 13 base pigments (15 including white and black) mixed in specified amounts. In Offset printing, a spot color is any color generated by an Ink (pure or mixed that is printed using a single run. ^[4]

The Pantone system also allows for many 'special' colors to be produced such as metallics and fluorescents. While most of the Pantone system colors are beyond the printed CMYK gamut, it is only in 2001 that Pantone began providing translations of their existing system with screen based colors (Screen based colors use the RGB—red, green, blue—system to create various colors). ^[5] And the GOE system has RGB and LAB values with each color. A Lab color space is a color-opponent space with dimension L for lightness and a and b ^[6]

Pantone colors are described by their allocated number (typically referred to as for example 'PMS 130'). PMS colors are almost always used in branding and have even found their way into government legislation (to describe the colors of flags). A flag is a piece of Cloth, often flown from a pole or mast, generally used Symbolically for signaling or identification In January 2003, the Scottish Parliament debated a petition (reference PE512) to refer to the blue in the Scottish flag (saltire) as 'Pantone 300'. The Scottish Parliament ( Scottish Gaelic: Pàrlamaid na h-Alba; Scots: Scottish Pairlament) is the devlolved national unicameral The Flag of Scotland is a white Saltire, a crux decussate (X-shaped cross representing the Cross of the Christian Martyr Countries such as Canada and South Korea and organizations such as the FIA have also chosen to refer to specific Pantone colors to use when producing flags. The National Flag of Canada, also known as the Maple Leaf, and fr l'Unifolié ( French for "the one-leafed" is a red Flag The Flag of South Korea, or Taegukgi has three parts a white background a red and blue Taegeuk (taijitu or "yin-yang" in the U. S. States including Texas have set legislated PMS colors of their flags^[7]. Texas ( is a state geographically located in the South Central United States and is also known as the Lone Star State.

Pantone Goe System

On September 5, 2007 Pantone introduced the Goe System^[8]. Goe consists of over 2,000 new colors in a brand new matching and numbering system. In addition to the standard swatch books (now called the GoeGuide), the new system also includes adhesive-backed GoeSticks, interactive software, tools and an online community where users are able to share color swatches and information.

The Goe name has no meaning, however the swatchbooks are well thought out as compared to the original Pantone system whose new colors were added ad-hoc. It is also streamlined to use fewer base colors (10 + Clear coating for reflections) and accommodates many technical challenges in reproducing colors on a press. ^[4]

Other products

Some Pantone Universe products. Pantone Universe is a brand of everyday items featured in Pantone colors.

In mid-2006 Pantone, partnering with Vermont-based Fine Paints of Europe, introduced a new line of interior and exterior paints. Fine Paints of Europe located in the US state of Vermont is the exclusive North American importer of paints and varnishes manufactured in the Netherlands by Wijzonol Bouwverven B The color palette uses Pantone's color research and trending and has more than 3000 colors.

Intellectual property

Pantone asserts that their lists of color numbers and pigment values are the intellectual property of Pantone and free use of the list is not allowed. Intellectual property ( IP) is a legal field that refers to creations of the mind such as musical literary and artistic works inventions and symbols names ^[9] This is frequently held as a reason why Pantone colors cannot be supported in Open Source software such as GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) and are not often found in low-cost software. Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a free Raster graphics editor used to process digital graphics and photographs However, Pantone palettes supplied by printer manufacturers can be obtained freely, and depending on supplier, do not come with usage restriction beyond sales ban on hard copy of the palette.

Pantone also possesses patent 5,734,800, a six-color Hexachrome printing system. Hexachrome is Pantone 's six-color Color printing process In addition to custom CMYK inks Hexachrome adds orange and Green inks to

References

See also

• Process color
• Spot color
• Natural Color System (NCS) and Munsell color system, other proprietary color spaces where most consumers use swatches to make color decisions; unlike Pantone, these systems are based on underlying color models rather than pigment mixtures. CMYK (short for '''c'''yan, '''m'''agenta, '''y'''ellow, and k ey ( Black) and often referred to as process color In Offset printing, a spot color is any color generated by an Ink (pure or mixed that is printed using a single run. Flag of Swedensvg|thumb|250px|The colors of the Swedish flag are officially established to be NCS 0580-Y10R for the shade of yellow and NCS 4055-R95B for the shade of blue]]The Natural In Colorimetry, the Munsell color system is a Color space that specifies Colors based on three color dimensions Hue, value ( lightness
• Database rights (copyright protection of databases in the EU)

External links

• Official website
• Informal discussion of intellectual property rights, including Pantone (search article)