How to Match PMS Colors in Powerpoint

Pantone Inc. is a New Jersey company that produces the Pantone Matching System, or PMS, of colors for printing. PMS is a color-matching system used internationally by the graphics art industry. Microsoft's PowerPoint doesn't include libraries of such proprietary color spaces. It simply offers combinations of colors based on red, green and blue, called RGB, or hue, saturation and lightness, or HSL. But computers can identify these components in any image they display, including those using PMS colors. Microsoft's PowerPoint can use this information to replicate the colors for its own text and images.

• 1

  Find an online PMS color chart or use the link in the Resource section. There are many sites that provide these charts free of charge.

• 2

  Scroll to the color on the online chart that you want to replicate in PowerPoint, for example, "PMS 807."

• 3

  Press the keyboard's "Print Screen" button.

• 4

  Open your photo editing program and paste your copied image into the editing window.

• 5

  Using Paint, a free photo-editing program, select the eyedropper from the ribbon's "Tools" tab. Click on the color you want to replicate.

• 6

  Click "Edit colors" from the far right of the ribbon's "Colors" tab. Note the values of the current color's red, green and blue components. For PMS 807, for instance, the values are "red = 214," "green = 0" and "blue = 158."

• 7

  Switch to PowerPoint.

• 8

  Click the down arrow next to "Font color" from the "Home" ribbon's "Font" tab. Click "More colors." The "Colors" window opens.

• 9

  Switch to the "Custom" tab. Enter the values you noted in the red, green and blue boxes. Click "OK."