Pantone

Pantone began in New Jersey in the 1950s as the commercial printing company of brothers Mervin and Jesse Levine, M & J Levine Advertising. In 1956, its founders, both advertising executives, hired recent Hofstra University graduate Lawrence Herbert as a color matching specialist after passing their color sorting test. Herbert used his chemistry knowledge to systematize and simplify the company's stock of pigments and production of colored inks. By 1962, Herbert was running the ink and printing division at a profit, while the commercial-display division was US$50,000 in debt; he subsequently purchased the company's technological assets from the Levine Brothers for US$50,000 (equivalent to $530,000 in 2025).

The company's primary products include the Pantone Guides, which consist of a large number of small (approximately 6×2 inches or 15×5 cm) thin cardboard or plastic sheets, printed on one side with a series of related color swatches and then bound into a small "fan deck". For instance, a particular "page" might contain several yellows of varying tints.

The idea behind the PMS is to allow designers to "color match" specific colors when a design enters production stage, regardless of the equipment used to produce the color. This system has been widely adopted by graphic designers and reproduction and printing houses. Pantone recommends that PMS Color Guides be purchased annually, as their inks become yellowish over time. Color variance also occurs within editions based on the paper stock used (coated, matte or uncoated), while interedition color variance occurs when there are changes to the specific paper stock used.

X-Rite, a supplier of color measurement instruments and software, purchased Pantone for US$180 million in October 2007. X-Rite was acquired by Danaher Corporation in 2012. In September 2023, Danaher completed the corporate spin-off of its Environmental and Applied Solutions segment (which included Pantone) as Veralto.

Adobe dispute

In 2022, a dispute between Pantone and Adobe resulted in the removal of Pantone color coordinates from Photoshop and Adobe's other design software, causing colors in graphic artists' digital documents to be replaced with black unless artists paid Pantone a separate $15 monthly subscription fee. Artists accused Pantone and Adobe of holding their work hostage.

In mid-2006 Pantone, partnering with Vermont-based Fine Paints of Europe, introduced a new line of interior and exterior paints. The color palette uses Pantone's color research and trending and has more than 3,000 colors.

In November 2015, Pantone partnered with Redland London to create a collection of bags inspired from Pantone's authority on color.

Pantone also produced Hexachrome, a patented six-color printing system. In addition to custom CMYK inks, Hexachrome added orange and green inks to expand the color gamut, for better color reproduction. It was therefore also known as a CMYKOG process. Hexachrome was discontinued by Pantone in 2008 when Adobe Systems stopped supporting their HexWare plugin software. In 2015 a 7-color printing system was developed, adding Violet in CMYKOGV, that can cover 90% of 1114 spot colors, while CMYK only about 60%. 1729 new colors were added, marked XGC (extended gamut coated), some colors do not have a number, like Process Blue XGC or Purple XGC. Base colors of OGV were new mono-pigment inks, pigments PO34, PG7 and PV23 were used respectively with 58°, 180° and 311° hue angles.

Pantone Color Manager allows for users of the Adobe Creative Suite and Creative Cloud as well as other software to import the most up to date information inclusive of L*a*b* numbers as well as CMYK and sRGB representations of all the various palettes (including chromatic adaptation under default D50 or D65 with 2 degree or 10 degree observer or even any ICC profile). L*a*b* numbers allow for the most accurate representation of color in a device-independent manner, but ideally X-rite InkFormulation is needed to emulate substrates and all 14 base colors of main Pantone system or 7 colors of CMYKOGV. Support is being phased out in favour of Pantone Connect plugin from Adobe Exchange of Creative Cloud. Adobe Illustrator removed five acb files (Adobe Color Books) of Pantone+ colors in 2023 when Pantone+ was deprecated by Pantone.