SV: Pantone bug?

[Jacob Schäffer]

Steve Rickaby wrote:
> > I have been asked to use Pantone 164 for a design. There 
> appears to be 
> > an oddity with FrameMaker's Pantone libraries, which give Pantone 
> > 164CVU, for example, as C:0 M:47 Y:76 K:0, which is a 
> browny-orange, 
> > instead of the correct purple tint, C:50 M:100 Y:0 K:0, as in, for 
> > example, Illustrator.

Kenneth C. Benson answered:
> I'm confused. What does it matter what the CMYK conversion 
> is? PMS 164 
> is a printer's ink mix and there's nothing you can do on your 
> computer 
> to change that mix.

As long as you use spot colours as separation plates their alternate composition doesn't matter. In that case only the tint value is interesting.

However, if you run a PDF workflow with composite colours it's quite nice to:

(1) view the colour correctly even though it represents only a separation plate. This is especially nice in case you need to repurpose the PDF, e.g. in downsampled form for internet viewing,

(2) when the colour need conversion to it's alternate colour space, e.g. when you print CMYK only.

Framemaker on MacIntosh can produce composite PDF's with spot colour information preserved, but Framemaker on Windows can NOT do that. 

Anyone running Framemaker on Windows might be interested in my article "Difficult PDF documents in prepress" found at http://www.grafikhuset.net/international/technology/whitepapers_pdfstuff_workingwithpdf.htm, which -- besides advertising our Publi PDF software -- explain this Framemaker on Windows problem.

Hope this helps.

All the best
Jacob Schäffer
Grafikhuset
Denmark