Color Shotgun

Match any colour on your own printer. Color Shotgun takes a starting colour (a Pantone, a customer's sample, a brand colour) and prints a chart of dozens or hundreds of close variations, laid out logically, so you can pick the patch that matches and use its formula.

See it in the shop · Version 1.2.8 · Needs PowerScripts 3.8.42 or later

Open the PowerScripts panel (Window > Extensions > PowerScripts) and choose Color Shotgun from the Color Tools scripts. The script has five tabs: Create, Chart Options, Color, Control Wedge and Export Options.

1. On Create, pick the starting colour from a colour book, or type it under Target Color (CMYK, RGB or Lab), and give it a Name.
2. Leave Pattern on Auto, Steps on 5 and Range on Standard.
3. Choose the Output: RGB or CMYK.
4. Press Create Chart (or Create and Export PDF) and print it on the printer and media for the job.
5. Find the patch that matches your sample and use its formula.

Color Shotgun turns your starting colour into Lab (or LCh), makes a range of colours round it based on how different they look, and converts them to your output colour. It is not a CMYK mixer: it doesn't just nudge the ink numbers, which would give duplicate colours and a messy layout. The colours are arranged by hue, lightness and saturation, or by grey balance, so the chart is logical and easy to search.

Because you print many patches close to the starting colour, a small error in the starting colour doesn't matter: one of the patches will usually match, if your printer can make the colour.

For most colours. Each block is a slightly different hue. Inside each block, colours are lighter at the top and darker at the bottom, greyer on the left and more saturated on the right. Always start at the centre patch of the middle block:

• Wrong colour (too green, too red)? Move to another block.
• Too light? Move down.
• Too grey? Move right.

For greys and dull colours. Each block is a different lightness. Inside each block, left is greener, right redder, up yellower and down bluer. This makes neutral colours much easier to find.

Each patch shows its Delta E: how different it is from the starting colour.

• 0: exactly the same.
• Below 1: extremely close, hard to tell apart.
• Below 2: close, usually a commercially acceptable match.
• 2 to 5: a noticeable difference.
• Over 5: clearly different.

A CMYK starting colour may come back with a different formula on the chart: it's converted to Lab and back, and the same colour can be made with many CMYK mixes. The formula is decided by your colour profile. That's fine: on a digital printer the formula in your file isn't the ink that goes on the media anyway. It passes through profiles and curves, so CMYK 0,95,70,25 and 18,100,81,9 can print the same colour. What matters is the colour you get.

• ColorBook: pick the starting colour from a colour book. The button next to the book opens your own book (.acb or .ase).
• Target Color: the starting colour and its Name (used for the chart).
• Pattern: Auto, Hue (better for saturated colours) or Grey Axis (better for neutral colours).
• Steps: how many patches across and down each block (3 to 11).
• Range: how far apart the patches are: Fine, Standard, Corse or Very Corse. Start with Standard, then go finer on a second chart.
• Output: RGB or CMYK colours.
• Advanced: fine-tune the range and steps of lightness and the a and b axes separately.
• The preview shows the layout of the chart.
• Output: shows the starting colour and its output colour, with the colour profiles used.
• Create Chart, Create and Export PDF: make the chart (and save it as a PDF with your Export Options).

• Swatch width, Swatch height, Gutter, Page Gutter, Page Border: the size of the patches and pages.
• Show colors out of gamut: mark patches your profile can't print, with a notch the size of deltaE Box Size.
• Label spacing, Label Font Size: the labels under each patch.
• Show Axis Labels in final chart, Include Color Formula.
• Include Lab Value in CMYK charts: needed for an accurate second round of matching.
• Display center target color as a circle: make the starting colour easy to spot.

• Compare: the Delta E formula (1976, 1994, 2000 or CMC).
• Location of Color Books: a folder of your own colour books.
• Resync color settings with Illustrator: pick up changes to Illustrator's colour settings.

• Include Color Control Wedge: a strip of control colours in the title bar, so you can check each print is consistent. Black line Divider adds a line between them.

• PDF Preset: the preset for Create and Export PDF.
• Open PDF after exporting.

1. Make a chart from the closest colour you know (a Pantone, or the RGB from a photo of the sample).
2. Print it and find the closest patch.
3. Still not right? Use that patch's formula as the new starting colour, set Range to Fine, and make a second chart.

Illustrator no longer includes Pantone colour books (since November 2022). Your options:

• Copy the .acb files from an older Illustrator (in its Presets/en_US/Swatches/Color Books folder) into the new one, or open them with the button next to the colour book.
• Put your colour books in a folder and set Location of Color Books on the Color tab.
• Use .ase swatch files saved from Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop.
• Get the Lab value from the Pantone extension or Pantone's website and type it in.
• Use a physical colour book, and type the RGB value (with your colour settings on sRGB).

• Most digital printers can print more colours than CMYK. You'll usually get a closer match with Output: RGB in an RGB document. Make sure your PDF or EPS doesn't convert the RGB to CMYK, or you lose the benefit.
• Check your colour settings match how you print: the profiles are shown in the Output section.
• If the chart document has a different colour profile from the colours, the script tells you which profile to assign.

• 1.2.8: General bug fixes and reliability. Needs PowerScripts 3.8.42 or later.
• 1.2.7
  • Improved: when the chart document has a different colour profile from the colours, it tells you which profile to assign.
  • Fixed: with your own colour books folder, the colour book you pick stays picked.
  • Improved: general bug fixes, reliability and speed.
• 1.2.5: Updated for PowerScripts 3.8.32.
• Older changes: PowerScripts Release Notes