Other Pantone Products
While the Pantone Matching System guide is probably the most commonly encountered member of the Pantone range, there are several other swatch books that will be of enormous help to graphic designers. To see them all, visit www.pantone.com.
The metallic formula guide
The Pantone Metallic Coated range is much smaller than the Solid Coated range. It provides a beautiful and exotic set of mixes between straight-out-of-the-can metallic inks and PMS colors, and the results on-press can be amazing. However, the ability of metallic inks to be reflective—and there is not much point in using a metallic ink if it is not allowed to be reflective—relies on a hard, smooth, coated paper surface. You cannot expect to get the same results from an uncoated stock, especially if it also has a textured finish. Some kinds of varnish have a detrimental effect on the metallic appearance, but fortunately the swatch book offers both varnished and unvarnished samples of each color. However, it is also possible to use a varnish to increase the effectiveness of a metallic ink by first printing it onto those areas that will then be overprinted with the metallic. To be most effective, the varnish should be a “spot” rather than a “flood” application, so that it only underprints the metallic area and not the entire sheet. The varnish will then help to seal the sheet, allowing the metallic to be more reflective, while not changing the appearance of the paper surface elsewhere.
Pantone metallic shades are much closer to being completely opaque than Pantone colors, simply because of the opacity of the metallic element.
Obviously there are many other intermediate mixes that can be extrapolated from the formulas given in the swatch book. If your clients want a shade that is not represented, it should not be too hard to come up with a mix that lands between the two swatches closest to the desired color. Just make sure they agree beforehand that the responsibility for heading into such uncharted territory is theirs, and not yours!
The pastel formula guide
This range is even smaller than the metallic guide. Each pastel color swatch has two tear-out chips. Pantone has developed a base palette specifically for this pastel range in order to make it easier for printers consistently to mix accurate pastel colors with a minimum of waste.
The four-color process guide
This contains many color swatches made up from the four “process” inks, i.e. C, M, Y, and K, and is available in both coated and uncoated formats. It is extremely helpful in figuring out the accuracy of on-screen colors as well as being an invaluable aid to deciding which tints to use in a layout. If you ever need to choose a CMYK color, this book is absolutely the best way to do it.
