Expert: Huma Riaz - 7/28/2008

Question
QUESTION: Hi Huma,
I am new to Photoshop....I hope I will understand your answer.  I am using Photoshop in a couple of different locations with different printers.  I need to print out the entire Pantone color library in each location to see how the colors look on each of the different printers.  I understand that this will be a booklet of many pages in each location but, the color matching is very important.  Is there a way to select the entire library of Pantones and send it to the printer for printing all of the pages in one job?  I have done this on other CAD systems....it can sometimes take a couple of hours to finish the print job.  Color matching of my printouts is critical.....I know that once I have determined the colors I need to use in each location, I will need to use different swatch colors in each location to achieve the same printed effect.....in my business, the Pantone #s in each location do not need to be the same.....it is the printing on the paper that needs to look the same.  Hopefully, my question is clear enough.  Thank you.

ANSWER: As far as my knowledge is concern Nancy, this kind of print out will be not possible in Photoshop, but if you just want to see the result in your printer why don’t you try sending pantone lib through some other software. Since the pantone shades are standard, I am sure the other software will provide the same result as PS.


Try this; I hope this will be an easy task, feel free to ask anything further


Huma Riaz
Location: Karachi-Pakistan



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for responding.  Would you please clarify what "some other software" would be?  Do you have a suggestion on the "other software"?  And if not, where would I find out the answer to this question?  Do you know if Illustrator is able to print a Pantone library.....or any other color library?  
I would also like to ask---if I cannot print the Pantone color range in Photoshop, can I print any other color range in Photoshop....perhaps RGB colors?  I have printed RGB colors on other design systems that claim 30,000 colors available by specifying to print every 5th page (6,000 colors) which makes the print job quite a bit smaller while still allowing me plenty of colors/casts to choose from.  At this moment, I am looking at a color range printout from another system called "Color Matters" that has 153 color "chips" on a page--each chip is about 1/2"x5/8"--arranged as 9 color chips horizontally and 17 chips vertically making 153 chips on the page.  The color ranges I am trying to print are very important in visualizing the finished products of my designs.  Any further info you can give me would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

Answer
I checked at my side Nancy, adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, In-design and macromedia freehand don’t offer this option. However you can try with Coral Draw or QuarkXpress may be if you get a solution.

In my conclusion for a solution of this is to make a swatch exchange file of pantone lib with the '.ase' file extension, however; if you could be able to open and print that file in any software I am sure your problem will be solved.

This is a universal swatch file for adobe, and you can open in any adobe software after saving. However; adobe don’t gives the option to print it.

You can search on download.com or internet for third party software which can be able to open and print this specific file format.


Hope this helps, feel free to ask anything further


Huma Riaz
Location: Dubai-U.A.E.