Where Are the Pantone Colors in Adobe Illustrator?

This tutorial will show you how to load any Pantone swatches in your Adobe Illustrator workspace including paper (Coated, Uncoated, etc) and cotton (TCX / TPX) books. This is a great way to mock up fabric for your clothing line in Illustrator.

Q: Where do I find the Pantone colors in Illustrator?
A: It depends on what Pantone book you use.

If you need to work with any of the paper / printed color books – you can find all of those colors in under 30 seconds, and I’ll show you how.

But if you need to work with the Pantone Fashion + Home Cotton books – any of the TPX / TCX colors – it takes a little bit of time to get that set up. But don’t worry, I’ll show you how to do that too.

Loading the Default Pantone Books / Libraries in Illustrator

This method works with any of the following paper books: CMYK Coated / Uncoated, Color Bridge Coated / Uncoated, Metallic Coated, Pastels & Neons Coated / Uncoated, Premium Metallics Coated, Solid Coated / Uncoated

1. From the Swatches Panel (Window > Swatches), open the drop down menu and choose Open Swatch Library > Color Books > to find and load the Pantone book you need.
   
2. From the Pantone swatch panel you just loaded, you will want to make sure Show Find Field is checked. This will allow you to search for your specific Pantone code via the search field and will save you from the tedious process of manually finding your color.
   
3. You might also want to change your view to Thumbnail or List
4. Bonus Tip: Choose “Persistent” if you want this swatch panel to launch every time you open Illustrator.
   

So, that was pretty easy – right? You now have all swatches from that book available to use directly in your designs.

But Where Are the TCX / TPX Colors from the Pantone Fashion + Home Cotton Book?

Unfortunately these libraries are not included in Illustrator. And if you work in fashion, then these are the books you need.

There used to be workarounds, but they no longer work.

To get the Pantone TCX / TPX colors into Illustrator, you’ll need to subscribe to Pantone Connect. (Because yep, like everyone else, Pantone decided they wanted to do the subscription model too.)