[Colin James]

Just following up because I found a solution and hopefully someone who is googling how to do this in the future might benefit.

Basically what I ended up doing was the following: I used this script ( https://www.tonton-pixel.com/blog/scripts/utility-scripts/parse-color-book-file/%5B1%5D ) to turn the specific Pantone color book I needed into a JSON file.

Then I used this https://www.tonton-pixel.com/blog/json-photoshop-scripting/json-action-manager/%5B2%5D JSON parser for photoshop that the same dude wrote to bring in the color book data into photoshop’s javascript as an object that I could step through. Be warned, while the JSON file that the colorbook parser spits out is valid json, i had to get rid of a lot of the spaces, carriage returns and some of the earlier entries ( only needed the color data anyway ) for it not to kick up an error when being parsed.

Then I #included this script https://www.rags-int-inc.com/PhotoTechStuff/ColorCalculator/%5B3%5D and used its RGB > to lab color space conversion function. Then I used the delta-e 2k color comparison forumla function ( requires lab color space because its a perceptual match ( which is better )). I kept an array of the deltaE results and found the smallest one, then looked up which arrayvalue/color that was associated with and viola there is my pantone color. that’s the basic gist.

Saved myself quite a bit of money not having to buy fashion industry plugins/software ( over priced and terrible… ).