An anonymous reader quotes a report from Kotaku: It's very likely you don't give a great deal of thought to where the digital colors you use originally came from. Nor, probably, have you wondered who might "own" a particular color, when you picked it when creating something in Photoshop. But a lot of people are about to give this a huge amount of their attention, as their collection of PSD files gets filled with unwanted black, due to a licensing change between Adobe and Pantone. As of now, widely used Adobe apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign will no longer support Pantone-owned colors for free, and those wishing for those colors to appear in their saved files will need to pay for a separate license. And this is real life. The removal of Pantone's colors from Adobe's software was meant to happen March 31 this year, but that date came and went. It was then due for August 16, then August 31. However, this month, people are noticing the effects, reporting issues with creations using Pantone's spot colors. And the solution? It's an Adobe plug-in to "minimize workflow disruption and to provide the updated libraries to the Adobe Creative Cloud users." Which, of course, costs $15 a month. It's Netflix, but for coloring in!

However, Pantone still states in its out-of-date FAQ that, "This update will have minimal impact on a designer's workflow. Existing Creative Cloud files and documents containing Pantone Color references will keep those color identities and information." Yet today, people are reporting that their Photoshop is informing them, "This file has Pantone colors that have been removed and replaced with black due to changes in Pantone's licensing with Adobe." Others have reported that even attaching a Pantone license within Photoshop isn't fixing the issue, colors still replaced by black, and workarounds sound like a pain.

"Graphic Design How To" on YouTube offers a workaround for Adobe users.

"Another tip suggested by Print Week is to back up your Pantone libraries, then re-importing them when your Adobe software updates to remove them, or if it's too late, finding a friend who already did," adds Kotaku. "There's a good chance this'll work, given Pantone's colors are stored as .ACB files, just as the rest of Photoshop's colors."

"Or, you know, you could just copy the metadata values of the Pantone range."