The Pantone Matching System remains the dominant spot-color printing system in the United States. Pantone sells guides called Pantone books) and chips for both spot colors and for process-color printing.
Pantone Fan Guides
Somewhat similar to the paint strips at a home-improvement store, the fan guides show blocks of several related colors with the color name or formula printed beside each color. The strips are fastened together at one end to support fanning the strips. Printed on coated-, uncoated-, or matte-finish stock, guides can be purchased separately or in sets.
Binders and Chips
These swatch books come in three-ring binders with pages of color blocks. The chips are little tear-off samples of colors. This format is ideal for providing samples with your artwork or digital files so that clients obtain a more accurate picture of how the printed colors in their projects appear as finished products. A few specialty guides in binders offer no tear-off chips.
Coated, Uncoated, and Matte Stocks
The type of paper affects the appearance of the ink. Swatch books are typically available on coated, uncoated, and matte stock to more closely show how the color will look in your application. Pantone also produces some specialty guides showing the inks on other surfaces, such as foil and film. Purchase the books or chips on the type of stock you most commonly use.
Formula/Solid Spot Color
The formula guides and solid chips are the swatch books for spot color inks. There are more than 1,000 PMS colors and a special guide for converting PMS colors to their closest matches in CMYK or process colors. Some specialty guides focus on metallic colors, pastels, or tints.
Process Color
Process guides and process chips help simplify the selection of process colors for four-color CMYK printing. The primary process swatch books contain more than 3,000 Pantone process colors with their CMYK percentages. The books are available on coated and uncoated stock and in SWOP or EURO editions. SWOP is a printing standard used in the U.S. and Asia. EURO (for Euroscale) is used in Europe.
Digital Guides
The latest innovation in color guides, digital chips match to more than 1,000 Pantone spot colors with their process-color equivalents and the output from a Xerox DocuColor 6060 digital press. The tear-out chips are available on coated stock.
Used and Old Swatch Books
The cost of old books is tempting, but new books are best. Colors fade over time so old books may not provide an accurate representation, making them no more useful for color-matching than your monitor and inkjet printer. Additionally, Pantone has made changes over the years that render some books obsolete. In 2004, the coated and matte stock used in all guides was updated, which resulted in some color differences from previous books.
Computer Simulation
Pantone color palettes for use with Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, QuarkXPress, and other software programs and apps simulate the appearance of Pantone spot and process colors (suffixes of CV, CVU, and CVC). These require your monitor to be properly calibrated; even still, remember that they are simply simulations. A printed swatch book is best for color selection and matching.
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