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Pantone now requires designers to make use of the Pantone Join plugin in the event that they wish to entry particular Pantone Colours in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign — and the expertise is lower than stellar.
Adobe has begun eradicating Pantone Colour books, a set of swatches included in Adobe coloration libraries. The corporate introduced in July that they might be phasing out the Colour Books in software program updates launched after August 16, 2022.
The change is going on as a result of “Pantone’s licensing with Adobe” has modified, in line with the FAQ concerning the topic.
This modification can even have an effect on initiatives which have already been created with “legacy” swatches. For those who open a Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign file that makes use of a eliminated coloration, it is going to be stuffed with black, and you may obtain an error directing you to obtain a plugin to resolve it.
Not all Pantone Colour books have been eliminated — CYMK Coated, CYMK uncoated, and Metallic Coated will stay.
Nonetheless, If you’d like the whole library, you may must obtain Pantone Join via Adobe Alternate.

Pantone Join is an Adobe plugin that works with Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. It requires you to make a free account with Pantone to make use of it.
The plugin states that Pantone Join Primary offers you entry to fifteen,000 colours, search, decide, and measure instruments, and offers you the flexibility to save lots of as much as 10 palettes on the internet.
For $15 a month, customers can improve to Pantone Join Premium, which provides ” a dozen extra instruments to create smarter, extra impactful palettes,” the plugin web page reads. “Premium additionally helps you to save and share UNLIMITED palettes for work in all of your Adobe design packages.”
There is a little bit of a hangup for Mac customers, too — the plugin doesn’t function any help for M1 Macs. As a substitute, you may should run an “Intel Emulated” model of the software program you need, which you are able to do through the Artistic Cloud app.
The expertise can be not very extremely rated — the plugin at the moment has a 1.6 out of 5 on Adobe Alternate. As well as, many customers notice how the plugin is tough to make use of, lacks M1 help, and is usually vulnerable to glitching out or crashing.
Some customers additionally notice that even after putting in Pantone Join and shelling out for a subscription, outdated design recordsdata nonetheless are rendered with out the suitable colours.
A number of critiques point out how they’ve paid for bodily coloration books, solely to be pressured to pay for digital ones as nicely.