Spot ink vs process ink
A Pantone (PMS) color is a recipe for one premixed ink; CMYK builds color optically from cyan, magenta, yellow, and black dots. When a design specified in PMS goes to a four-color press, every spot color needs a process translation. That’s the conversion this table provides. Some translations are nearly exact; saturated oranges, purples, and blues lose vibrancy, which no converter can fix. It’s ink physics, not math.
The workflow that avoids surprises
Convert early, not at the printer. Pull the CMYK approximation while designing, look at it honestly (the swatch column shows the screen equivalent), and decide then whether the muted version is acceptable or the job needs a spot plate. Springing the conversion at output time is how brand reds turn brick and brand blues turn gray in the delivered boxes.
Common brand-color conversions
| PMS | CMYK (approx.) | HEX |
|---|---|---|
| 185 | 0, 91, 76, 0 | #FF173D |
| 186 | 0, 100, 81, 4 | #F5002F |
| 286 | 100, 66, 0, 2 | #0055FA |
| Reflex Blue | 100, 73, 0, 2 | #0043FA |
| Orange 021 | 0, 53, 100, 0 | #FF7800 |
Values in the searchable table above come from the same dataset. Use it for the other 1,100 codes, and the HEX to CMYK converterwhen you’re starting from a screen color instead of a PMS code.
