HSV to Pantone Converter
Enter hue, saturation and value — the same numbers Photoshop and Figma show as HSB — and get the closest Pantone colours ranked by ΔE*00 colour difference.
These are the same numbers Photoshop and Illustrator show in their H, S and B fields — copy them straight across.
Closest Pantone matches
Ranked by ΔE*00Pantone 186-C
Pantone 199-C
Pantone 206-C
Pantone 200-C
Pantone 711-C
What is HSV, and why match it to Pantone?
HSV describes colour with three numbers built around how people actually think about it. Hue is a position on the colour wheel from 0 to 360 degrees. Saturation, 0 to 100 per cent, is how vivid the colour is. Value, also 0 to 100 per cent, is how bright. Adobe calls the third axis Brightness and labels the model HSB, but the numbers are identical — an HSB reading from Photoshop is an HSV value.
The conversion to Pantone is the moment a screen decision meets a printed one. A designer picks a colour in Figma or Photoshop by dragging around the picker, arrives at something that works, and then has to hand a printer a spot-ink specification. HSV is where the colour was chosen; Pantone is what the press needs. Bridging the two is one of the most common jobs in a print-adjacent design workflow.
It also comes up when adapting a digital-first brand for physical output. Plenty of identities are designed entirely on screen, with colours defined in HEX or picked visually, and only later need packaging, signage or merchandise. Working back from the HSV coordinates to the nearest PMS colour is the first step in producing a brand book a print supplier can actually use.
The important limitation is that HSV carries no information about printability. It is a re-parameterisation of RGB, so it can describe screen colours far more saturated than any ink can reproduce. When a vivid on-screen colour returns a poor match here, that is not a failure of the tool — it is the gamut boundary between an emissive display and pigment on paper, showing up as a number.
Pantone vs HSV: how they differ
| Pantone (PMS) | HSV | |
|---|---|---|
| Type of system | A finite catalogue of 1,341 coated ink colours | A continuous mathematical model over RGB |
| Where it comes from | A fan deck or a brand specification | A colour picker in Photoshop, Figma or Illustrator |
| Axes | None — a number points at a recipe | Hue 0–360°, Saturation 0–100%, Value 0–100% |
| Physical realisability | Every colour is a real, mixable ink | Can describe screen colours no ink can reproduce |
| Precision of the match | Discrete — you get the nearest catalogue entry | Continuous — any value between two points is valid |
| Result of conversion | A closest match plus a ΔE difference | An exact calculation in the other direction |
| Best for | Specifying colour a printer can reproduce | Choosing colour and generating tints and shades |
| Also known as | PMS | HSB in Adobe applications — the same model |
Worked HSV → Pantone conversions
Enter any of these HSV / HSB values into the fields above and the tool returns the Pantone colour shown. The relationship is arithmetic, so it holds in both directions.
Who converts HSV to Pantone?
This direction turns a screen-side colour decision into something a print supplier can quote against.
- Taking a design-tool colour to print — A colour chosen by eye in Figma or Photoshop needs a PMS number before it can be printed as a spot. The HSB values from the picker go straight into the fields above.
- Adapting a digital-first brand for physical output — Identities designed on screen often have no print specification. Converting the picker values gives a defensible starting point for packaging and signage.
- Checking whether a screen colour is printable — A poor ΔE on a vivid colour is an early warning that the shade lives outside print gamut and will need rethinking rather than reproducing.
- Merchandise and apparel production — Garment printers and embroiderers work in Pantone. Converting the brand’s on-screen colour avoids a mismatch discovered at sampling stage.
- Building a print palette from a UI scale — Design-system ramps are usually generated by stepping saturation and value. Converting each step finds the Pantone equivalents for printed collateral.
- Briefing a print supplier quickly — Handing over a PMS number rather than a screenshot removes an entire round of colour queries from the start of a job.
How to use this HSV to Pantone converter
Drag the sliders to explore or type exact values into the number fields — the match updates as you go.
- Enter the hue in degrees, from 0 to 360 — red sits at 0, green at 120 and blue at 240.
- Enter saturation as a percentage, from 0 for grey to 100 for fully vivid.
- Enter value (brightness) as a percentage, from 0 for black to 100 for the brightest version of that hue.
- Read the five closest Pantone coated colours, ordered by ΔE*00 difference from your input.
- Check the ΔE on the top result: under 2 is a commercial match, above 5 means the colour you picked has no close printable equivalent.
- Confirm the chosen PMS number against a physical Pantone guide — screens are backlit and paper is not, so a monitor comparison will mislead you.
Accuracy — read before you specify a colour
HSV describes colour on a screen, and Pantone describes ink on paper. A display emits light while print reflects it, so the two can never look identical under any conditions, and a display can produce saturated colours that no spot ink reaches. Matching here runs against each Pantone colour's sRGB equivalent, which is itself an approximation for the most saturated inks. Treat a good result as a strong starting point and confirm it on a physical guide before specifying.
Results are ranked by ΔE*00 (CIEDE2000), computed in CIELAB rather than in HSV — HSV distance is not perceptual, so ranking by it would produce misleading results. Below 1 is imperceptible, 1–2 is a commercial match, 2–5 shows side by side, and above 5 the colours read as different. Expect larger figures for highly saturated inputs: that gap is the boundary between screen gamut and print gamut, not a shortcoming of the matching.
In short: conversion values on this page are approximate, because the two systems use different colourants and cover different gamuts. Verify against the official physical colour standard before committing to production, tooling or a signed-off brand spec.