I started using Pantone Connect a few months ago and it’s now one of my favourite tools. One of the best things about going on this journey has been getting into this brand new world that I honestly knew nothing about. It’s made me realise that every industry comes with its own tools, terminology and technological advancements. If you’re not ‘in’ that world, you can easily miss out on everything happening.

As a lover of colour I was already well aware of Pantone, but what I love is getting to know the products they make. Today I want to write about the Pantone Connect app.

The Pantone Connect app is available for free on iOS and Android devices

The app is free – which when you’re like me and in development, learning and haven’t sold anything yet – is an absolute blessing. I’d previously used Adobe Capture – another brilliant product – so I wasn’t completely unfamiliar regarding how to use an app like this. However, it’s very intuitive to use. I like to use the Pantone app because eventually, once I’ve decided on prints, I’ll communicate Pantone cotton shades (TCX colours) to factories so I like the fact I’m working within the Pantone ecosystem.

How I use Pantone Connect

I use the app a couple of different ways:

Identify colours and shades that I love from images.
Translate Pantone shades to HEX / CMYK shades and vice versa
Create colour palettes and save them down
Identify variations in hue, saturation and see how the colours chosen for palettes sit on the colour wheel.

I think this app is wonderful for all sorts of colour work from what I do with prints, to interior design inspiration. It is really very useful. As I’m on this mission to train my eye, tools like this help me develop a method and an approach to my colour work.

Always learning, always improving

I’ve learned how to change colours on designs and put colours together myself. I’d be so interested in 2, 3, 5 years’ time, to see how my process has improved, or perhaps how it’s exactly the same. I’m still learning how to optimise the tools at my disposal and make the process really smooth. The biggest unknown for me is the process of taking a design from the screen to final fabrics. I have a process, but it’s hard to be 100% sure how close the colours will be from screen to fabric. I do a lot of test prints, which can get quite expensive!

When I look at my colour work now vs. when I started, it’s one of my my biggest achievements. It’s been so good for me to learn that there are tools like this that help the creative process. Previously I thought someone would just ‘know’ how colours work together. I know I have a feeling when things work well together, a very real excitement. It’s now clear that there are tools to help with this part of the creative process.

_{Image credit: https://exchange.adobe.com/creativecloud.details.103029.pantone-connect.html}