Hexachrome

Hexachrome is Pantone's six-color color printing process. In addition to custom CMYK inks, Hexachrome adds orange and green inks to expand the color gamut, for better color reproduction. It is therefore also referred as the CMYKOG process.

Some printers use lighter CMYK "photographic dye" with identical hue, e.g. the "CcMmYK" process, but for a different purpose. These ink sets provide smoother blends, particularly in areas with low saturation. They do not, however, extend the limits of the color gamut of the device, which is still constrained by the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks.

Some inkjet printers have incorporated the same concept of extended gamuts, including printers from Canon (Orange and Green) and MacDermid Colorspan (Blue, Orange, Red, and Green, for a CcMmYyKkBORG configuration).

While the details of Hexachrome are not secret, use of Hexachrome is limited, by trademark and patent, to those obtaining a license from Pantone.

Typically, software that works with Hexachrome does not require a designer to specify the amounts of each ink. Instead the designer uses RGB colors tagged with a specific ICC profile, and as part of raster image processing this is converted using a six-channel ICC profile provided by Pantone.

Hexachrome software (HexImage 2.5 Photoshop plug-in) was discontinued by Pantone Inc. in the 2nd Quarter of 2008. Fact|date=September 2008

External links

* [http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,734,800.PN.&OS=PN/5,734,800&RS=PN/5,734,800 US patent 5,734,800]
* [http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/pantone.aspx?pg=20151&ca=10 Pantone Hexachrome patent announcement news release, May 26 1998]