Quick Tip: Quickly convert CMYK to Pantone
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Quick Tip: Quickly convert CMYK to Pantone

on Oct 25th 2011 with 90 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Illustrator CS4
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Length: 2:14 min

A few times a each month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of Vectortuts+. This Quick Tip by Cheryl Graham was first published on January 8th 2010.

Have you ever found yourself rushing a file for the printer but your client hasn’t specified a spot color for their design? Finding a spot color equivalent to CMYK can be difficult. What your client sees is often different to what you see. Here’s a quick way to find the Pantone© equivalent for a CMYK process color without the use of a color book. This tip is perfect for designers who need to use professional offset printing.

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Cheryl Graham trained as a traditional artist in drawing and painting. These days she spends more time in front of the computer than the easel. She's been using Adobe Illustrator for over 15 years. Her Illustrator work has been featured in the "The Adobe Illustrator WOW! Book" and "Real World Illustrator."  

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  • Marcela

    Great video! quick, direct and very very helpful! thanks!

  • http://www.rjonesdesign.daportfolio.com/ Randy Jones

    Awesome! I needed a fast and easy way to convert CMYK to spot for my clients, I didnt want to deal with scripts within Illustrator, and this is actually better and faster!

  • http://gwalker05@yahoo.com Gina

    OMG. What a GREAT tip! I saved a bunch of time. Wish I found it sooner and not wasted time running through my files and folders looking for the Pantone number since all the projects were converted to CMYK and the client is now asking for the Pantone! Thank You!

  • http://www.hayfeversolutions.com HayFever

    Very helpful, thanks Cheryl. I am still using Illustrator CS3 (yeah i know, it’s time to upgrade) and your tutorial was still relevant for CS3 and it enabled me to find a Pantone colour match for a CMYK colour. Thanks!

  • Michael

    Great tutorial both in content and form! Color conversion is always a sticking point with clients and I suppose until we all work off of one calibrated monitor, it always will be. But this gets everyone immediately into the right ballpark. Many, many thanks!

  • Evernew

    This tip is useful, however, the first Pantone orange it picked was 173C – then, on the second showing it selected 1655C?

    • josephine_b

      I noticed the same thing and those two swatches are quite different!

      • Rahul

        How do we overcome this? Two pantone colours in two different steps!

  • http://blog.workingwilsons.com Matthew

    Thanks so much. You’re a life saver!

  • Zachary

    I tried this to find the Pantone for a Hunter Green in a project for a client of mine, and when I did the conversion the outcome looks nothing like the CMYK from the original design . It’s darker, less saturated, and bluer.

    In doing this conversion am I to trust that the Pantone from the conversion will look more like the CMYK from the file once it is printed OR am I to assume that the printed Pantone will look more like the Pantone on screen?

  • http://www.darrenbyrnes.info Darren

    Thanks for this tip, it saved me a bit of time and I sure appreciate it.

    Also –

    “In doing this conversion am I to trust that the Pantone from the conversion will look more like the CMYK from the file once it is printed OR am I to assume that the printed Pantone will look more like the Pantone on screen?”

    It sounds like you need to calibrate your screen and get some actual printed chips to verify the color conversions. Printed material can sometimes look nothing like what appears on a screen. Heck, even different monitors can display the “same” color differently.

  • meat

    thanks! helped out a lot! love learning new stuff.

    and you sound hot

  • subash

    excellent quick tip!…solves some of the headache

  • afsana

    thanks alot it really really helped!!

  • Authi

    Awesome….

    I like it

  • http://www.nicolasdesign.com Nicolas Toth

    Exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

  • http://www.facebook.com/craigweiss.sd Craig Weiss

    A million thanks!

  • Missy

    Thank you so much.

  • haz

    AWESOME!!! thank you so very much!

  • Yvan Goudard

    Great tip! This is a huge time saver. Well done!

  • http://teo.is/ Matteo Di Capua

    This is an extremely useful, time-saving tip! Thank you!

  • Jane

    AHHHmazing tip thank you for sharing :)

  • Pixelfire

    Thank you for this tip on converting CMYK colours to Spot colours. I would have never known how to do that and it really does save time looking through a Pantone book.
    Cheers,
    Neil.

  • WoutervanderZee

    Thanks, very helpfull!

  • Meng

    Thank you very much for the tip
    This is very helpful!

  • http://www.facebook.com/elisa.bassett Elisa L Bassett

    THANK YOU!!!!!!

  • rome d.

    I LOVE YOU!!!

  • http://twitter.com/AmyKotas Amy Kotas

    Great tip! I wish I’d seen this two days ago. :)

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