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I thought this would be asked somewhere before, but I can't find it. So if you have any good links for me to read please let me know.

How much do Pantone (especially Pantone Solid Coated) and sRGB "overlap"?
Is it possible to classify pantone somewhere in a graphic like this?

RGB CMYK Overlap

Does sRGB cover every Pantone color and can sRGB (technically) display all Pantone colors (I know, that there could be display issues with the screen not showing the exact color)? I'm just interested in the theoretical coverage to convert between these two systems or if I will lose information when I do the mathematical conversion.

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    No.. easy result... dot-color.com/2012/12/11/…
    – Scott
    Jan 26, 2022 at 9:56
  • @Scott Thanks. But that's one color. Yes, it proves that not the whole Pantone system is possible to display in sRGB. But at what percentage can I display Pantone in sRGB?
    – jona
    Jan 26, 2022 at 10:04
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    There are several colours that would be impossible in RGB. The first that come to mind are the fluorescent/day-glo and metalic inks, so the answer is no.
    – Billy Kerr
    Jan 26, 2022 at 10:05
  • The chromaticity chart you show causes you to misunedstand things. What you see in the graph is a slice of the chromaticity as a function of intensity. CMYK is much better at doing dark colors than sRGB and vice versa so the darker in chromaticity you go the more CMYK dominates. The brigher the more sRGB. IN either case since panatone colors are inks they can technically span a much wider rande than either of these, but are unlikely to win on the brighetst colors.
    – joojaa
    Jan 26, 2022 at 13:39

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Pantone actually answers this on their site.

No. The gamut for Pantone colors varies from the sRGB gamut. Not all Pantone colors are possible in sRGB.

enter image description here Image from link below

More information can be found on Pantone's website, specifically here: https://www.pantone.com/articles/color-fundamentals/understanding-different-color-spaces

As for mathematical conversion.. well, I do art. I was told there'd be no math. I can't help with that. :)

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  • Thank you very much. I came across this one too, but didn't really answered the coverage of standard Solid Coated, without any special colors. This one is more of a new question, but do you know a better color space that I can use to cover all pantone colors for conversion? RGB is the only one I can values for online.
    – jona
    Jan 26, 2022 at 10:11
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    I don't know why you are converting anything. Some colors simply can not be converted between gamuts. Not all RGB colors reproduce in CMYK. Generally one doesn't use any math to force them to convert, one chooses another color which visually appears close enough. This is starting to appear like an X/Y problem.
    – Scott
    Jan 26, 2022 at 10:13
  • Yes, thanks. I know that I can't force this. We use Pantone to compare the customer color with our "special" yarn colors for our product. Most customers can give us a Pantone color we can try to replicate with our yarn (limited color palette). I now want to meassure the yarn colors in LAB and build a converter for pantone to our yarn. But when I miss out a lot between sRGB and Pantone this might not be the best way.
    – jona
    Jan 26, 2022 at 10:19
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    @jona, well I guess you should do all of your conversion math in Lab and not convert to sRGB in the process. But if you really want to "color science the shit out of this" I think you are in for quite an uphill battle. Can you reliably measure the Lab values of the yarn? And is it even guaranteed that a sample of yarn and an Pantone ink with matching Lab values are the best best match possible? Some of your clients might also be looking at a screen instead of the actual physical color book. I don't know. Just feel like there are a lot of assumptions here.
    – Wolff
    Jan 26, 2022 at 17:31
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    The Lab values are in the color books that comes with Adobe CC. If you don't want to manually grab the values for each ink you'll have to decode the .colorbook files. I have a link somewhere... I'll find it for you when I get home from work.
    – Wolff
    Jan 27, 2022 at 10:11

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