The app has given Pantone the quickest return on investment of any product to date, said Mark Wilton, business development manager for Pantone’s parent, X-Rite, at DES. The app carries a price tag of circa $10 – a fraction of the cost of swatch books or the Capsure device.
It capitalises on advances in smartphone and mobile camera technology to allow designers to capture, create and share Pantone colour palettes while on the move.
Wilton described the app as the “baby brother” of the Pantone Capsure, which retails at $785.
“It is complementary alongside the Capsure, as smartphones don’t have calibrated cameras so they are not 100% accurate, although they do get pretty close.”
Andy Hatkoff, vice president of technology licensing for Pantone, said: “We continue to see a fundamental shift in the way designers work and smartphones are increasingly acting as portable colour studios.
“Since myPantone’s release [for the iPhone], our Facebook community has been passionate about telling us the features they would like to see in future versions, including CMYK values and display calibration for more accurate colour representation on screen.
“And, as the smartphone market continues to expand, requests for an Android version of myPantone could not be ignored.”
The myPantone app for Android gives graphic designers access to more than 13,000 Pantone colours, including the Pantone Plus Series: Formula Guide, CMYK, Colour Bridge, Premium Metallics and Pastels & Neons, and the Pantone Fashion + Home: Colour System Library and Nylon Brights.
Each colour swatch includes sRGB, HTML and LAB values, while users can also cross reference colours from different libraries to find, for instance, the Pantone Fashion + Home colour that most closely matches a Pantone Plus colour.
Colour palettes can be shared by email, sent as Pantone Colour Chips or as swatch files that can be used in Adobe Creative Suite and QuarkXPress, as well as via Facebook or the Pantone website.
Meanwhile, myPantone 2.0 for the iPhone includes a variety of new features, such as CMYK data for all Pantone Plus Series colours and the ability to connect to Pantone Colour Manager desktop software to upload colour managed data for Pantone colours based on ICC colour output device profiles.
The update, which is free for existing myPantone users, also allows the iPhone display to be calibrated to view colour-corrected Pantone colours, although an X-Rite calibration device such as ColourMunki, i1Pro or i1Display 2, is needed for the calibration.
The Android app is priced at $7 and is available from the Android Market store. It is compatible with Android 2.2 or higher.
Current owners of myPantone for the iPhone will receive a free upgrade to myPantone 2.0, which will otherwise cost $10.49 from the Apple App Store. The software is compatible with iPhone OS 4.0 and higher and can also be used with the iPad and iPod Touch.
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter