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CMYK to pantone color conversion in Photoshop

// February 7th, 2008 // Adobe Photoshop

hi visitors some days i come across a project in which my client ask me to convert their logo in Pantone colors. So i thought why not to add a tutorial on how to do that in photoshop.

1- First open your image, if its in psd format then you should flat it.
2- Convert it to CMYK if it is not.
3- Duplicate your image and rename it, in my case its “design_pantone”
4- Go to its channel palette, you should see four channels there named as Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and black there.
5- Select Cyan,Magenta and yellow channel and delete them individually.There should only black channel left there.
6- Now Click on the new channel button as shown in the image below , a new channel named as alpha1 should be there.

CMYK to Pantone-1

7- Double Click on it and a channel option dialog box should appear.
8- Select the spot color from the option and Click the color to assign the new color.

CMYK to Pantone-2

Now For CMYK, we first select the Global value of Cyan color which is #00FFFF and then find the nearest pantone match of that color.

9- So enter the value #00FFFF in the dialog box
then click the color library button to access the nearest pantone color match, Photoshop will automatically select nearest pantone color.I use the same as photoshop selects but you can change that if you want.Click OK when you  are done.

CMYK to Pantone-3

10- Now you should see the pantone color in the name field, click OK again.

There should be a cyan tone over all the picture now.

11- Make sure you selected the current pantone color channel, now go to image menu and then select the apply image.

Apply image dialog box appears.

12- In source drop down select the orignal image in CMYK,  in my case that was design.
In layer there should be background
In Channel field select the Cyan channel.
blending should be set to normal.Opacity  100%
Click OK when you are done!.

CMYK to Pantone-4

Now you mapped the Cyan color to pantone, next you would repeat steps from 6-12 for mapping both the Magenta and then the yellow.

The Hex value for magenta is #FF00FF and Yellow is #FFFF00.

When you mapped all channels to Pantone…..You are done!

If you see big difference in the colors double click the channels and change pantone spot colors until you are satisfied from the result.

Save the file as PSD or DCS 2.0(eps)

At the end i want to say that this is just the one way i done my work because it gives you quite a control over the colors so you can adjust them by your self..

Thanks, Have a GOOD DAY !

13 Responses to “CMYK to pantone color conversion in Photoshop”

1. asdasd says:

   May 13, 2008 at 9:20 am

   sdasdasdasd
2. asdasd says:

   May 13, 2008 at 9:21 am

   thank you
3. asdasd says:

   May 13, 2008 at 9:21 am

   gfh
4. Jeanette says:

   August 19, 2008 at 8:08 pm

   In step #8, where do I go to select the global value? That step doesn’t seem as clear as it could be. I get that far and then I get confused.
5. emalik says:

   August 20, 2008 at 1:29 pm

   actually i got Hex value of Cyan Magenta yellow from Wikipedia, this i did to get the right tone of that color. otherwise you can use your own tone.
6. Maria says:

   August 21, 2008 at 11:33 am

   Hi

   I followed all the steps but the channels remained black instead of changing to the selected Pantone colours Any ideas?
7. emalik says:

   August 22, 2008 at 5:15 am

   Hi Maria please make sure you done step 12, as i mentioned, if it still does not make good then send file over here i can help you in that hey its freeeee offer.
8. Faisal Awan says:

   October 14, 2008 at 9:44 am

   Hi well i guess you should have made this tutorial a bit more simpler.

   Good job!
9. admin says:

   October 14, 2008 at 9:51 am

   thanks buddy ,,,,, be in touch for future posts
10. Leska says:

    December 31, 2008 at 3:14 am

    Hey,

    its really helpfull tutorial. But i have quastion:
    i followed all steps.. and on the end it looked fine, i saved file as .eps and then tryed to open it in Illustator. The programm said “DCS EPS files can not be oppened or embedded. Please plac e this file using the Link option” fine.. so i did, Placed image was black and white and looked like it has too low resolution.

    Please Help! Im stock
11. admin says:

    January 5, 2009 at 8:13 pm

    Ahhh sorry i was away, due to work load here at pk, so cant see the updates here, Soooo this is the problem, DCS EPS would not open directly with illustrator you need to place it in illustrator. Please make sure you embed the color profile during the export from the photoshop also in illustrator make sure all channels are set to visible.

    If still problem is there please contact me at
    eht.malik@gmail.com i will glad to help thanks
12. Scott says:

    April 14, 2009 at 1:37 am

    I followed the steps and my new “cyan” channel remained black as well. I followed them exactly, and to the letter. I am using Photoshop CS4
13. user23 says:

    May 19, 2010 at 1:32 pm

    i followed these steps but there is a problem. When delete the other channels I have to flatten the layers and so connot use the “apply image” setting, how do you get around this?