Yesterday there was a hubbub on The Twitter about how, starting this month and next, Adobe products would no longer be providing access to the industry-standard Pantone Matching System library of color swatches. It’s understandable honestly, Pantone has dominated the industry by making their color formulas available consistently to printers and designers since the 50s through the use of expensive but lavishly-printed Color Guides and digital palettes for design applications.

Until recently, Adobe and Pantone seemed to have a good partnership. Adobe products have long included the Pantone swatch libraries with their design software, allowing designers at all levels access to the same library, allowing design consistency and predictability at all levels of the design and printing process. This ‘free bonus’ of the expensive Pantone library of swatches certainly helped to cement Adobe’s position as the standard software for the entire design industry.