[Dylan16807]

It's not missing the point. You'd still use pantone for actual printing. This exists so the colors don't show up as black while you're editing.

[TheRealPomax]

*some colors

There's zero point in designing with Pantone if you're not going to use actual Pantone. Just use any palette (including this one) then.

[anikom15]

How do you know which Pantone color to specify when printing?

[Dylan16807]

You tell your printer "[Pantone] Green 0921 C" or whatever the color is. This is a compatible list with the same ID numbers.

You pick a spot color the same way you would have done it a month ago. And you print the same way you would have done it a month ago, except possibly with an extra annotation on the spot color.

The main use of this plugin is to let you actually see your spot colors instead of black while you edit. The secondary use is to give you a rough idea of the available colors, but you wouldn't finalize picking a spot color based on how it looks on a screen anyway, you'd get an actual sample.

[anikom15]

So Freetone maintains the mapping between its own Freetone colors and the Pantone colors?

[Dylan16807]

You mean all four of the ones up top?

Those were added to be cheeky. You can ignore them.

All the ones that say SEMPLETONE+ are 1:1 and don't need to be maintained.

[anikom15]

Okay, so I’m a printer. You specify a free tone which allows me to get the SEMPLETONE+ which allows me to get the PANTONE with a simple database lookup, and I just need to pay PANTONE for calibration essentially.

Is that correct? Where am I off?

[Dylan16807]

More or less, yes.

Or better, I export the file saying PANTONE.

For the printer, nothing changes.

This plugin exists so that designers don't have to pay $21 per month per seat for effectively nothing. It's not an attempt to shun Pantone entirely.