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>I've been looking at http://www.pargolf.com/PMS.htm. When I go into the
>source code, I see hexadecimal values for the PMS "swatches" on the page.
>For example, the hexadecimal value for PMS 2945 seems to be #0054a0.
>
>I've worked extensively with hexadecimal values in designing colors for Web
>pages, but I am not familiar with PMS requirements. Is it fair to say that
>these are approximate hexadecimal values for the actual PMS colors?
>
Dan,
It is fair to say that these are somewhere vaguely in the uber-neighborhood of approximate hexadecimal values for actual PMS colors.
Pantone publishes a variety of swatch books. Let's concentrate on the two that are most important for TWs.
The spot color book provides recipes for mixing specific inks (not the CMYK process inks, by the way) to achieve the swatch color. These inks are based on mineral pigments (well, they used to be; maybe some of them are organic dyes now) that are standardized. The names of some of them would be familiar to artists who purchase oil paints. Spot color inks are made by literally mixing these standard colored inks on a plate with a knife and a brayer before applying them to the ink fountains on the press.
The process color book provides recipes for screening the CMYK process colors in the prepress stripping process. For example, you might need a 5% screen of cyan, a 15% screen of magenta, etc.
The range of colors that can be generated by a method is called the gamut (a word with a fascinating etymology that you should look up some time--I recommend American Heritage Dictionary or Chambers Etymological Dictionary). The gamut for spot colors is much larger than the gamut for process colors. However the gamut for both of these ranges of reflective (subtractive) processes is larger than the gamut for transmissive (additive) media such as RGB monitors.
The hexadecimal RGB values used in HTML code can cover the entire RGB gamut, from (0,0,0) to (255,255,255). [Zero represents no signal and 255 represents 100% signal.]
Different programs use different algorithms to convert between RGB and CMYK values. This can result in numbers changing on a round-trip conversion when two programs are involved (Illustrator/Photoshop; Photoshop/PageMaker; etc.) Also, the appearance of colors on a monitor is heavily influenced by the calibration (or lack thereof) of the monitor itself, which is completely outside the control of the person designing the Web page.
In the case of the golf site you are looking at, there's still another factor to consider: Neither online RGB swatches nor catalog-printed CMYK swatches/photos necessarily resemble dyed yarns. So if you are purchasing apparel based on a picture, you really need to request samples or fabric swatches from the vendor. Even a PMS number is no guarantee, because a golf shirt that matches the PMS swatch book in fluorescent light may not match in daylight. Blues are particularly troublesome in this regard. A robin's-egg blue golf shirt can look like a grayish French blue in a printed catalog and like sky blue online. (Man, am I glad I asked for samples!)
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