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Documentation behind Pantone's new colour standard Goe is seriously flawed, according to industry experts.

The Flemish Innovation Centre for Graphic Communication (VIGC) claimed in an open letter that because the RGB colour space has not been defined, the print industry will experience "serious problems with RGB values and their CMYK conversions".

VIGC managing director Eddy Hagen said commercial representatives at this year's GraphExpo conference in Chicago showed little interest in the issue.

Hagen claimed that Pantone has based Goe on the sRGB colour space, as that is the most used standard, having been adopted by Microsoft for its Windows platform. "But most people in graphic arts work on a Mac in AdobeRGB," he told printweek.com.

He said that the discrepancy between the results of creating colours based on Pantone values is visibly different (see image).

He also suggested that AdobeRGB would have been a better basis for Pantone Goe because of sRGB's smaller gamut.

"sRGB is missing a lot of colours that we can print with ISOcoated," he said.

Hagens said that despite Pantone's apparent indifference, the company has updated the white paper on Goe, clarifying the RGB issue, although has made no public announcement about it.

Pantone issued a statement in response to the open letter, saying: "To assist designers in obtaining the best possible match of Pantone Goe colours on-screen and across the World Wide Web, Pantone chose to print each colour's sRGB values within the GoeGuide.

"However, recognising the need of users for Adobe 1998 RGB, those values have also been provided within the myPantone palettes software, along with HTML and sRGB values. MyPantone palettes comes with each Goe product purchase. The myPantone palette software defaults to sRGB, but users can change this to Adobe98 RGB in the Preferences section."

But Hagens maintained that this is not adequate. "I know that this is possible, they told me at GraphExpo. I don't have any problem with the way they work, but they should always mention or show the RGB colour space used when they show RGB numbers. And not just once somewhere hidden in some manual or folder.

"People don't read manuals, nor do they keep this in mind all the time. That's the issue I have with Goe... They should consistently say sRGB, not just RGB (or AdobeRGB when that's used in their software). And at this moment, the colour guide doesn't do that, nor does the interface of their myPantone palette software."

Pantone's GoeGuide doesn't specify which colour space is being used

The limitations of sRGB are demonstrated where the sRGB colour space is narrower than the ISOcoated v2: the red gamut is ISOcoated v2 (ECI), the solid one is sRGB, the wireframe is AdobeRGB.