Stuart Semple responds to Pantone news with "Freetone"

Artist Stuart Semple has created "FREETONE" in response to the recent Adobe updates.

Due to a change in how Adobe licenses Pantone colors, Pantone color libraries are being removed from Adobe, and old files that used to be colorful may now open with only "black" in place of color, unless you license Pantone colors for $21 a month.

He announced Freetone on Twitter: "I've just liberated the whole colour book and I'm giving it away for FREE unless you're associated with Adobe or Pantone!"

Adobe & Pantone think they can own colours and charge us to use them! So I've just liberated the whole colour book and I'm giving it away for FREE unless you're associated with Adobe or Pantone! You can get yours for free here: https://t.co/deQ2RUub8e pic.twitter.com/VDO3bQeuQ1

— STUART SEMPLE (@stuartsemple) October 28, 2022

Stuart has prior experience with liberating colors, as he really doesn't like it when someone tries to "own" one. In fact, that's kind of Stuart's brand. When Vantablack was Vantablack S-VIS, a sprayable paint that uses randomly aligned carbon nanotubes and very high levels of absorption from ultraviolet to the terahertz spectrum was exclusively licensed to Anish Kapoor's studio for artistic use, Stuart clapped back by creating BLACK 2.0 which any artist can buy and use from his website.  You can also get yourself a nice knock-off of Yves Klein's 'International Klein Blue (IKB)' called "easy Klein, IKB, Incredibly Kleinish Blue".