X-Rite’s Digital Workflow Tools Helps Digital Textile Manufacturers Accurately Produce Pantone Color Of The Year 2021: Ultimate Gray + Illuminating

Image Courtesy of X-Rite

X-Rite helps textiles, paints, home goods, electronics, and other consumer product companies accurately produce PANTONE® 17-5104 Ultimate Gray + PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating using integrated digital workflow tools including PantoneLIVE, formulation and quality control software. 

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., December, 2020 – X-Rite Incorporated and Pantone LLC, global leaders in color science and technology, today announced that the official spectral color value for PANTONE® 17-5104 Ultimate Gray + PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating is now available in PantoneLIVE™, a cloud-based digital color standard ecosystem.

PantoneLIVE integrates across X-Rite’s digital workflow tools allowing brands and their material suppliers to immediately start color matching, formulating and accurately producing Ultimate Gray and Illuminating across textiles, paint and coatings, or plastics.  

“A marriage of strength and optimism, Ultimate Gray and Illuminating do not have to be used in equal proportions, either color can take precedence whether for apparel, beauty, home furnishings, electronics, product design or packaging,” said Laurie Pressman, Vice President of the Pantone Color Institute.

“Quickly incorporating color trends into apparel or other product designs can be a challenge – especially when a finished product includes multiple materials like cotton, leather, plastics, synthetics and more,” said Richard Knapp, Product Manager, X-Rite and Pantone. “Together X-Rite and Pantone provide an integrated set of tools from digital color specification, formulation, measurement and quality control to help brands and their material suppliers immediately being matching and producing Ultimate Gray and Illuminating across a range of materials.”

Specifying Ultimate Gray And Illuminating In Digital Design Workflows

Designers have access to a unique color platform from which they can incorporate Ultimate Gray and Illuminating into their design files.

The new Pantone Connect platform provides designers easy access to Pantone Color Libraries and palette creation tools from anywhere via mobile app for iOS and Android, web app, and within Adobe Creative Cloud. 

Achieving Ultimate Gray And Illuminating In Textiles, Plastics And Paint And Coatings 

PantoneLIVE Production for Plastic, Coatings, and Textile offers a collection of product-oriented Pantone Color libraries curated to meet the specific needs of color material suppliers and manufacturers working with plastics, coatings and textiles. 

Apparel, home goods, electronics and other consumer good brands can use PantoneLIVE Production for Plastic, Coatings, and Textile to streamline the production for colors such as Ultimate Gray and Illuminating found in the Pantone Fashion, Home + Interiors (FHI) System and for the Pantone Matching System (PMS) for plastics and coatings.

Sharing color specification as part of a digital workflow allows suppliers to begin color formulation immediately for faster production.

Manufacturers can access Pantone spectral data in PantoneLIVE Production directly through X-Rite Color iMatch formulation software and Color iQC quality assurance software paired with an X-Rite benchtop spectrophotometer or a Ci64 handheld spectrophotometer.

These solutions provide an integrated connected color workflow designed to ensure accurate color formulation and quality control for PANTONE Colors including Ultimate Gray and Illuminating. 

For more information on formulating Pantone Color of the Year 2021: PANTONE® 17-5104 Ultimate Gray + PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating, read our recent blog post: https://www.xrite.com/blog/coy-formulation-is-key

About X-Rite

Founded in 1958, X-Rite Incorporated is a global leader in the science and technology of color and appearance.

With Pantone, X-Rite employs more than 800 people in 11 countries. The company’s corporate headquarters are located in Grand Rapids, Mich., with regional headquarters in Europe and Asia and service centers across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas.

X-Rite offers a full range of solutions used by manufacturers, retailers, printers, photographers and graphic design houses to achieve precise management and communication of color and appearance throughout their processes.