Spot Color Chart Creator

Make a printed reference chart of any colour book (Pantone or your own), or of the swatches in your document, on your own printer. Each patch is labelled with exactly the information you want: name, formulas, Lab values, Delta E and more. Great for showing customers what your printer can really do, and for checking spot colour replacement in your RIP.

See it in the shop · Version 2.3.6 · Needs PowerScripts 3.8.42 or later

Open the PowerScripts panel (Window > Extensions > PowerScripts) and choose Spot Color Chart Creator from the Color Charts scripts. The script has three tabs: Create, Color Options and Layout.

1. On Create, choose Document Color: CMYK (or RGB) and the colour book, for example PANTONE+ Solid Coated.
2. Leave First pages only ticked and press Create Chart. Check the layout.
3. Untick First pages only and press Create Chart again for the full chart.
4. Print it with the colour settings you use for jobs.

• Document Color: the colour mode of the chart document.
• Create Spot Colors: add the colour book's colours to the chart as spot colours.
  • Create Process color patch next to spot: half of each patch is the spot colour, the other half its process conversion. You see how your printer prints both, which is useful for checking spot colour replacement in your RIP.
• Mark out of Gamut Process Colors: when a colour converted to CMYK or RGB is further from the original than the deltaE Limit (on Color Options), a small white square is notched out of the patch's corner, so you know your printer can't quite make it.
• First pages only (Use for testing layout): make only the first page, to check the layout quickly.
• Load Swatches and Load Selected Swatches: use your document's swatches (all, or the selected ones) instead of a colour book.
• Colour book: the book to chart. It lists the books in Illustrator's swatch library folder. The button next to it () opens your own colour book (.acb or .ase) or CGATS data file.
• Labels: the lines of text under each patch, in order (drag to reorder). The first line can have its own font size. For each line choose the Label Type, and set Decimals to the number of decimal places you want:

The source and output values are left out for colours that are already CMYK or RGB.

• Color Engine: PowerCMS (the PowerScripts colour engine) or AdobeCMS (Illustrator's).
• Black Point Comp: use Illustrator Settings, or turn black point compensation On or Off.
• deltaE Limit: above this difference, a patch is marked out of gamut.
• Compare: the Delta E formula for the out-of-gamut check.
• deltaE Box Size: the size of the out-of-gamut notch, in mm.
• Location of Color Books: use your own folder of colour books. Leave it blank for Illustrator's.

• Direction: fill down each column first, or across each row first.
• Swatch Width, Swatch Height, Swatch Spacing: the patches and the gap between them.
• Label Vertical Spacing: the line height of the labels. Label Text Offset moves them up or down.
• Name Font Size: the first label line. Formula Font Size: all the others.
• Page Border, Page Spacing: the page margin, and the gap between pages.
• Swatch Rows, Swatch Columns: the size of each block of patches.
• Rows per Page, Swatch Row Gutter: how many blocks on a page, and the gap between them.
• Header and Footer: their height, text offset and font size.
• Remove Name Text: text to leave out of every name, for example PANTONE to keep labels short.

Import a CGATS file with the button next to the colour book list. With spectral data you choose:

• Source: the column of the file to use.
• Illuminant and Observer: how the spectral data is turned into colour.
• Graph: the grey line is the illuminant, the black line the colour's spectral data, with the XYZ and Lab values worked out below.

1. Tick Create Spot Colors and Create Process color patch next to spot.
2. Make the chart and print it through your RIP with spot colour replacement on.
3. Where the two halves of a patch differ, the RIP's replacement and Illustrator's conversion disagree.

• Use First pages only while you set up the layout: a full Pantone book is many pages.
• Save your favourite label sets as presets (see Using Presets).

• Colours depend on your colour settings (Edit > Color Settings) and the colour engine you choose.
• The footer of each page records the colour mode, profile and settings used.

• 2.3.6: General bug fixes and reliability. Needs PowerScripts 3.8.42 or later.
• 2.3.5
  • Fixed: Mark out of Gamut Process Colors no longer marks colours that print fine.
  • Fixed: with your own colour books folder, the colour book you pick stays picked.
  • Improved: general bug fixes, reliability and speed.
• 2.3.3: Updated for PowerScripts 3.8.32.
• Older changes: PowerScripts Release Notes