CMYK vs. PMS

PMS stands for Pantone Matching System, which is used primarily for printing and the manufacture of colored paint, fabric, and plastics. Manufactures can use the Pantone system to make sure colors match. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These are the primary color for print. Mixing yellow and blue makes green, and yellow and red makes orange. So the printing industry knew that changing the quantities of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black would creates an endless amount of colors. Designers and printers are aware of what these two color systems are, but business owners who want to print something might find this confusing.

Using PMS colors can cut down the cost of printing because CMYK requires four plates for print, while PMS color only needs two. Take the color green for example to print green in CMYK you need a variation/percentage of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. You’ll need 85% cyan, 14% magenta, 100% yellow, and 2% black. Green in PMS is just Pantone 362, it doesn’t need to be broken up into four parts. If you have a logo made from this color with different shades of green, you’ll only need one plate to print this logo. You can also convert PMS to CMYK if you want. Web printers like Vista Print or any other can do this. Some companies also have swatch books that allows them to find the PMS value of any projects that used CMYK. However, converting your PMS color to CMYK makes it lose its opacity and the colors appear to be dim and not as bright.