Convert any colors into Pantone colors in Illustrator & Photoshop

It often happens that after you create your designs, especially a logo or the work that you need to print, the color swatch of which are either in CMYK or RGB & you want to convert it in Pantone colors. Converting the colors from any mode (i.e RGB, CMYK, HSB) inot Pantone colors is now very easy to do with Illustrator CS3, let me tell you how to do that!! And, I will also tell you how to do that in Photoshop as well!!

Step 1:
Open your Swatch Palette & select the Color Group or the colors that are on your artworks (it will be represented by a folder icon) & then click the Edit Color Group button at the bottom of your Swatch Palette.

Step 2:
Next, Live Color window opens up, in that click the Limit the color group button & then select Color Books & choose the Pantone color of your choice from the menu, I chose, Pantone solid coated, as show in the image below.

Step 3:
Then click on the New Color Group button, as shown with the red highlight in the image below & see how you now have the new Pantone Colors in your Color Group selector.

Finally, Click OK & see the changes, now you have your chosen color converted into Pantone color on your Swatch Palette!! Easy, isn't it?!! You can do the same with kuler colors as well, & if you have not yet tried kuler feature of illustrator CS3, Check my last post here.

Now, doing this is also fairly simple in Photoshop.
I will quickly show you how with this example, click on your foreground color to open your Color Picker window. Then click on Color Libraries button.

Next, in the Color Libraries, select the Pantone Color of your choice in the Book drop down menu.

Now the Photoshop, shows you the pantone equivalent of your chosen color with the black border, clcik OK & there you are, save the swatch if you wish & done!!

Needless to say, this tip is helpful not only for converting colors into Pantone colors, but also for any other colors like APNA color, Focoltone etc. in both Illustrator & Photoshop!!