What is Pantone Validated Certification?

Pantone is well known in the designer circle; designers are trained by using Pantone Matching System to study colour order system, designers are educated to use Pantone colour library to select and assign the colours for their work, and designers are paid special attention to “Pantone Colour of the Year” to create artwork, news, even merchandise based on the selected colour. However, the Pantone products designers are familiar with are mostly paper, plastic or textile based. The Pantone Colour System, Pantone Colour Library, Colour Book or Colour Guide are primarily printed on paper or dyed on textile substrates. How does a monitor brand like BenQ connected with Pantone, or the designer circle? Pantone Validated Certification plays an important role to bridge the physical colour swatches and the digital data together.

Pantone formally was a printing company back in 1960’s, but soon it realized the graphic arts industry was lacking an effective colour communication standard. Therefore, it introduced the first Pantone Matching System in 1963 to serve as a colour communication system with 500 colours. Pantone Matching System has been evolved ever since with more colours and in different substrates, even in different media. Nowadays, Pantone Matching System has been expanded to more than 1,300 colours, and including paper substrates, plastics, textile, and even in electronic libraries. In 2007, X-rite, a leading manufacturer of colour measurement and management products acquired Pantone.

In 2019, BenQ announced a wide range of monitors which are “Pantone Validated” certified, including both DesignVue Designer monitor PD series and PhotoVue Photographer monitor SW series. BenQ is the first professional display brand offers dedicate professional monitors which have obtained Pantone Validated Certification. But what people do not know is that X-rite, Pantone and BenQ had started the certification discussion many years ago, back in 2013. And BenQ had started to push for the certification ever since. This is all because BenQ has seen the needs of a colour certification scheme for designers.

The benefit of creating / obtaining Pantone Validated Certification has to link back to the latest Pantone product, PantoneLIVE. PantoneLIVE is a digital version of the Pantone colour library and is a cloud-based service. The goal is for the brand-owners, designers, pre-press operators and press operators to access the same database, the same colour values for the same job they are working on. It is referred as managing colours in the cloud. The concept is great, but when comes down to realization, the first problem people will encounter is: “which monitor should I trust since colours from different monitors are very different?” Hence, this is where Pantone Validated Certification comes in. The certification tests the monitor’s ability to accurately reproduce Pantone colours, and if the monitor can reproduce certain percentage of Pantone colours accurately, then the monitor is awarded Pantone Validated Certification. The test easily involves thousands of colours. Therefore, the benefit to the designers is, when the designer needs a reliable monitor, he or she could check whether this monitor has received Pantone Validated Certification. If so, then the designers could be confident that the Pantone colours he or she sees from the monitor are accurate; are no different from the physical colour books or guides Pantone produces.

The second question might be raised is that “which monitor from BenQ should I choose? DesignVue PD series or PhotoVue SW seriesThey both have been awarded Pantone Validated Certification.” A simple answer to this question could be the budget you have, but a deeper thought could be given that whether calibration will be carried out at a later stage. PD series monitors’ Pantone Validated Certification is based on Factory Preset Mode, and SW series monitors’ Pantone Validated Certification is based on both Factory Preset Mode and Calibration Mode. Which means both PD and SW monitors users can enjoy out-of-the-box Pantone colour accuracy, and for SW series users, even after using BenQ proprietary hardware calibration software, Palette Master Element, users can also benefit from validated Pantone colours!

BenQ, X-rite and Pantone has started the discussion of Pantone Validated Certification to provide designers, brand owners, pre-press operators, press operators and Pantone Matching System users a way to validate monitor’s Pantone Colour rendering capability. Been the first professional monitor brand awarded Pantone Validated Certification, Pantone Matching System users using BenQ DesignVue Designer PD series and PhotoVue Photographer SW series can ensure not only accurate colour, but accurate Pantone colours! It is a perfect match with PantoneLIVE, a cloud-based service to allow users to view, select Pantone colour database with more confidence.