Prepress
110 Shades of Nude: Pantone Unveils SkinTone Guide
Wednesday 19. September 2012 - Global colour authority sets the standard for matching skin colour with its first SkinTone Guide
Pantone LLC, an X-Rite company and the global authority on colour and provider of professional colour standards for the design industries, today announced the PANTONE SkinTone Guide, the first scientifically based guide for matching and reproducing lifelike skin tones in a variety of industries.
“The new SkinTone Guide and COLOUR MANAGER Software are vital tools for accurately communicating the colour of a model’s skin as it appears when photographed to final colour-correct proofs,” said Victor Basile, senior vice president, director of print graphic services at Publicis Groupe, one of the largest, multinational communications groups in the world. “The guide will help take some of the guesswork out of the colour correction process by providing our experts with a defined system for reaching skin tone colour targets, saving us time and eliminating costly mistakes.”
More than 1,000 human skin measurements were collected from participants across a diverse range of ethnicities and age groups. To ensure a universally precise sample, several high-end X-Rite spectrophotometers and PANTONE CAPSURE, a compact, handheld spectro-colourimeter, were used to measure skin samples. Based on these measurements, Pantone established an accurate skin colour space and created the PANTONE SkinTone Library, which defines the 110 most reproducible colours.
“The semi-translucent nature of skin makes measuring and reproducing skin tones in print and manufacturing an extremely challenging process,” explained Giovanni Marra, director of corporate marketing at Pantone. “By starting with actual skin tones and working back to define a SkinTone colour space, we were able to catalog the most realistic and reproducible skin tones.”
Marra continued, “In most other colour palettes, the colour ‘nude’ is unfortunately relegated to a few skin colours, but in reality, nature has given us a multitude of beautiful shades of skin. From print, packaging and healthcare to fashion, cosmetics and toy production, the new SkinTone Guide will help companies produce more authentic products in a broader skin tone range.”
The SkinTone Guide features 110, 1.75″ x 7″ pages, each dedicated to its own SkinTone shade for more accurate visualisation. All pages include a small circular cutout so users can hold the guide over the particular skin sample being matched, easing evaluation and improving accuracy.
The SkinTone Guide is arranged from light to dark and utilises an alpha-numeric numbering system that represents both the tone and undertone of each colour – from 1Y01 SP (the lightest yellow tone) to 4R15 SP (the reddest tone).
COLOUR MANAGER Software, free-of-charge with each SkinTone Guide purchase, provides sRGB and CMYK colour values to aid in reproducing accurate SkinTones in variety of media, including web, video, animation, print and packaging.
Pricing and Availability
The PANTONE SkinTone Guide is available immediately for GBP £71. All SkinTone Guide purchases include complimentary access to PANTONE COLOUR MANAGER Software upon registration. Colours featured in the SkinTone Guide are also available as PANTONE PLASTIC STANDARD Chips, which are sold individually. The SkinTone Guide and PLASTIC STANDARD Chips are available immediately online at www.pantone.com and through PANTONE resellers worldwide.