Q. We seem to have a lot of trouble printing Pantone® colors lately. We chose two different looking colors on screen that print the same on our colour printer. We also notice that the Pantone® colours are wrong in Adobe Photoshop CS2 and don’t convert to CMYK the way they did in older versions of Photoshop. How can we reinstall the Pantone® colors so that they print correctly?

A. There are a couple of issues at work here. Pantone colours are not swatches to use in design work. In fact Pantone (aka PMS colors) are ink colours to be used as “special colors” or “spot colours”. Many colours in the Pantone® library cannot be reproduced using CMYK ink combinations – so the Pantone Matching System (PMS) was developed to create a standard reference for these exceptional colours. The commercial printers can then mix their own inks and print these colours in addition to CMYK combinations to achieve the look you need in your job.

When you choose colours in your designs from the Pantone libraries your application renders the colour to best match how the “special” ink will look. Pantone supplies Adobe, Quark, Apple and others with the definitions of these inks. The application translates the color into RGB on your monitor. The problem is that the RGB rendering of the colours is sometimes quite different than the CMYK breakdown (also supplied by Pantone).

Here are two different Pantone colours:

They look completely different on screen yet are very similar printed on a colour (CMYK) printer. You should convert your pantone colours into CMYK if you intend to print them – so that you can see them as they will print – if you’re not intending to use them as spot colours on press.

The second problem you are experiencing has to do with the introduction of Pantone colours defined in the “Lab” colour space in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Lab is a device independent colour space where colours are defined as measured scientifically. Lab colours will then have to be converted into RGB or CMYK based on settings defined in your working environment. The monitor you use, the ambient light in your office, the ink profile of your printers, the colour or your printing substrate and several and other factors can influence the way that a particular color will be separated and rendered.

If you need to use the old definitions, Adobe and Pantone have supplied a separate library in Photoshop called “Solid to Process” which have already been defined in CMYK. It’s only a matter of time before Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and QuarkXPress also adopt the Lab defined Pantone colours.

Q. I want to buy the new Apple laptop with the Intel chip but I’ve heard that there is no software for it. Is it too early to buy these laptops?

A. Six months ago Apple announced that the Macintosh computers would be switching to Intel. The IBM/Motorola built PowerPC processor has reached its peak. The PowerPC cannot be made to run cool enough to be put into a laptop. Apple has only been able to put the fourth generation CPU into the laptops. As a result, they are falling behind the speed of the G5 Macintosh. At MacWorld in January Apple introduced the Intel based iMac and the new MacBook Pro earlier than anticipated.

The transition to the Intel chip is going to be able to support most of the current Mac OS X native applications using Rosetta an Apple built emulator. The Intel Macs will not be able to run “Classic” applications. We were able to run the older Mac OS 9 applications on the PowerPC Macs because of Classic – which runs Mac OS 9 in an emulator, but Rosetta will not run Classic applications. (In case your wondering, you will not be able to run Windows operating systems on these Macs because they are not the same as Intel PCs.) For a growing list of programs that don’t run on Intel Macs visit: http://www.macintouch.com/imacintel/rosettacompat.html

So to answer the question – it may be prudent to wait if you are dependant on Classic applications. Adobe’s Creative Suite applications do run but with some slow downs. (www.adobe.com) QuarkXPress will be shipping version 7 sometime in March. All of the Apple applications work of course – so you will be able to surf the Internet and receive mail, etc. Overall, the MacBook Pro is four times faster than the fastest PowerBook G4 and as time goes by more applications will become available. You should also consider that many people have already ordered the new Macs and the backorders (as I write) are considerable. If you’ve wanted a laptop for a while, you can also expect that used PowerBooks will start to appear – when they are usually scarce. It will be interesting to see what Apple will announce on April 1, 2006 – Apple’s 30th anniversary.

Q. Is there a cheaper alternative for working with Microsoft Word files?

A. As a matter of fact, you already have an application on your Mac. You can open Microsoft Word files with Apple’s TextEdit application. If you’re on a Windows PC you can use WordPad to open MS Word files.