Pantone Goe: serious problem with RGB values!

  

(English version below - Nederlandstalige pagina)

Recently Pantone launched Goe, their newest color system. However, this is lethal for accurate color communications, by design. Read our open letter to Pantone. And check out our example of what can go wrong.
Update 13 September 2007: it seems that Pantone has updated his white paper on 13 September 2007 (check the creation date of the pdf!). It now says that the color guide gives the sRGB values. We hope they will also do this with the color guides. If you want to see the old version of the white paper, we printed it from the cached html-version of Google.
Update 14 September 2007: Pantone send out a note to the press stating: "To assist designers in obtaining the best possible match of PANTONE Goe colours on-screen and across the World Wide Web, Pantone chose to print each colour's sRGB values within the GoeGuide. However, recognising the need of users for Adobe 1998 RGB, those values have ALSO been provided within the myPANTONE palettes software, along with HTML and sRGB values. myPANTONE palettes comes with each Goe Product purchase. The myPANTONE palette software defaults to sRGB, but users can change this to Adobe98 RGB in the Preferences section." Which is good. But are they going to clearify it on the color guide (see picture above), in the user interface?
Update 17 September 2007: we had a conference call with Pantone. More information will follow...
Update 22 September 2007: the past week we had e-mail conversations with Pantone almost every single day. What has come out of it thus far:

  • The Goe white paper has been revised.
  • Other content on their website related to RGB and Pantone Goe has been revised or will be revised shortly.
  • The 'red' brochure on the Goe System (the flyer that they are handing out everywhere) has been updated and will be reprinted immediately (i.e. at this very moment).
  • The color guides: it was too late to revise the already printed guides. However, these guides will get a tip-in to the box to explain the issue. The next print run of the guides will mention sRGB instead of RGB next to all patches and it will also contain more information on sRGB/AdobeRGB, to explain the differences.
  • The software: this is not clear how this will be handled. In their next revision they will certainly do something to clearify the difference between sRGB and AdobeRGB.
  • Additional to this, Pantone has also committed itself to deliver educational articles to educate designers in the use of sRGB, AdobeRGB.

 

What's the issue?
Many people have been asking what the issue is. Well, in the color guide - you know, the pretty guide with the printed color patches - every color patch is accompanied by RGB values. But values in which RGB color space? That's not clear if you look at the info surrounding the patch... And you need to be clear about that: sRGB (that's the one Pantone Goe is using as a default) is different from AdobeRGB (which is the most widely used in prepress). The same numbers in the two different color spaces give different colors (check our example). Also the user interface of their software often shows RGB values, without clearly stating in which RGB color space they are definied. You need to go into the menus to check it.
The solution?
Simple: put sRGB next to the numbers in the color guides in stead of RGB. And put the RGB color space that is used near the RGB values in the interface of the software, not just somewhere deep in the menus. Then it would be clear and prevent lots of problems. Not that difficult, isn't it?

 

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