Pantone ColorUp

By Donald Jenner


Pantone ColorUp is two programs from the company that defines
color for most people in this country dealing with graphics.
There are other standard systems, but Pantone is the most
commonly used in the printing industry.  What's nice about
ColorUp is that Pantone uses it to teach the effective use
of color.  It's like a lesson or two from the pro.

The big program is Color Explorer.  "Big" is no exageration;
Color Explorer is a single eight megabyte .EXE file.  Among
other things, this means that you need a goodly amount of 
disk space.  It also means that the program moves right 
smartly on just about any system.

Run the program and the course outline is presented -- 
sections on color physics and harmony, business and reproduction,
illusions and color models.  Each section is presented as an
interactive book (no sound, sadly...).  Each element is 
effectively illustrated.  Terms are defined by an online 
glossary keyed to buttons on the screen.  The illustrations
are extraordinarily effective; my eyes are still a bit in
shock from the presentation on color fatigue!

Color Chooser, the companion program, is a program for 
building custom palettes.  These palettes can be used with
a number of programs, including Corel Draw.  

Color Chooser is targetted to business users making presentation
graphics; the color palettes are limited to sixteen colors and
most of the programs Chooser talks to are presentation graphics
applications.  Pantone supplies a generous selection of "designer
palettes, keyed for different output devices (on-screen, slides,
etc.); pick a background and the program suggests appropriate colors
for different image elements -- text, and so on.  As you scroll
through the different background colors, Chooser presents a short
comment on the color's uses and strengths -- or weaknesses, as the
case may be.

Creating custom palettes involves double-clicking on one of the
on-screen color chips.  This opens a window for mixing a new color,
with three color selection options -- Pantone color, Hue-Saturation-
Lightness and Red-Green-Blue methods.  Save the new palette in a 
custom-palette file, or export it to the native format of your
favorite presentation graphics program -- or Corel Draw, of course.

ColorUp should find favor with folks learning about design and
color; the Color Explorer is very good, and a great deal less
painful a learning tool than the rather cumbersome books that are
the staple reading on the subject of color theory.  The Chooser 
program will find favor with folks looking to quickly define 
effective and handsome color sets for special projects.

			###

Press Contact:
Pantone		201-935-5500