Digital transformation in color management: Pantone Connect

Pantone is a global US brand with over 10 million designers and producers worldwide who rely on their color management products.

Challenge

Pantone is one of the most recognized companies for color standardization. Color standardization is a very important process across all industries. It is a process that helps manufacturers, designers, and other people in the industry get a specific desired color, no matter the material used or observed.

To compare different shades of colors and find a specific color code, people had to use the Pantone physical color guidebook. This color guidebook helped users specify and manage color across print graphics, digital design, web, animation, and video. This system was extremely complicated, slow, and pricey since the color guidebooks were very expensive, big, and impractical to use.

To solve this problem, Pantone wanted to create an application through which users would be able to access color databases easier. This application would make choosing and identifying colors digital and a lot easier than using the physical color guidebook. To develop this new application, which they named Pantone Connect, Pantone needed developers and that is when our collaboration began.

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Solution

The idea behind this application was to give all users easier and much cheaper access to the Pantone color database which contains over 15,000 colors. The application was meant to be fitting for anyone and to be used for both B2B and B2C. This app would enable users to find any color shade with a simple color scanning inside the app itself. To do this, users would use the Pantone Color Match Card.

This Color Match Card is physical cardboard with a color spectrum that should be put in front of the color that is being scanned. In that way, the application can accurately determine which shade of the color is being presented and find the matching color code in the database.

Pantone connect

Apart from being much easier to use, this application has a big benefit. Users can scan any color, anywhere, and the application will give them the code for the most similar color in the Pantone color database.

This application can be used to:

• Extract, isolate any color in a digital file to identify the nearest Pantone color match and build palettes from them.
• Pair the Pantone Color Match Card with the Pantone Connect Mobile App to capture color inspiration.
• Create a custom collage of one, three, or five images and sample isolated colors.

Users can save color codes in the app to make their personal palette they can come back to use later in some other project.This application does not only store palettes users create, but it also allows users to see how their palette will be perceived by people with common color blindness. Another benefit is that the palette can be put against light and dark backgrounds for contrast.

Pantone connect allows users to share palette information with people up and down their workflow to ensure that everyone is working from the same color page. This means that designers can have easy communication with their team, and make sure that each individual has the same color shades on their devices. This application is available on different platforms which means that it can be used by professionals as well as amateurs who are just looking for inspiration.

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Pantone Connect can be found on:

• Web application for web browser
• IOS App Store
• Android Google Play
• Adobe Extension Marketplace for use in Adobe Creative Suite

This application was launched in December of 2020, and here you can find more info about it.

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