Adobe to dump Pantone from Creative Cloud

In a move that may have major implications for the industry, creative and prepress software juggernaut Adobe will no longer offer Pantone Color Libraries in its Creative Cloud products. 

Pantone: Dropped by Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe said, “In March 2022, the Pantone Color Libraries that are pre-loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe Color, and Adobe Capture will be removed from future software updates.”

However beyond asking users to “stay tuned for updates” and saying it is working on new solutions, no alternative plan has been released.

Industry speculation has the two companies falling out over licensing fees. Adobe is the dominant software in print and design, and Pantone the dominant colour matching service.

Designers using Creative Cloud may be forced to pay a subscription to Pantone, which would be another unwelcome cost. Panone has said it is working in new solutions with other digital design services.

Adobe users are able to use a free plug in for Creative Cloud called Pantone Connect, which will give access to a limited – 15,000 – number of colours, or pay around $85 a year for unlimited version. However there are fears while print businesses will pay up, thousands of designers may not. It can be downloaded from the Adobe marketplace.

Pantone is not the only way to specify colour of course, designers can use RGB values, or HTML Hex colour codes, or CMYK print colour values instead.