Designers who use Adobe’s Creative Suite tools, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, are furious over a licensing change that forces them to pay Pantone an extra $15 a month (or $90 a year) to work with its signature colors in Adobe’s apps.Designers were directed to download the Pantone Connect plugin for Adobe—which is deceptively listed as “free” in the Adobe Exchange store with information about a “premium” subscription listed in the plugin’s description—but some found that the plugin didn’t show up in their Adobe apps or didn’t work.Others who were able to access the plugin complained about a clunky user interface, with some even calling it “unusable.” According to Pantone Connect’s page on Adobe Exchange, the last time the plugin was updated was in September of 2019, which might explain the glitches and bad UI.Ashley Still, senior vice president of digital media marketing, strategy, and global partnerships at Adobe, told Gizmodo in an email on Wednesday that the company had shared in June that “Pantone decided to change its business model.”“To access the complete set of Pantone Color Books, Pantone now requires customers to purchase a premium license through Pantone Connect and install a plug-in using Adobe Exchange,” Still explained.In the meantime, customers also have access to up to 14 extensive color books through Creative Cloud subscriptions.”Pantone, meanwhile, blamed the controversy on Adobe in an emailed statement to Gizmodo, all the while referring to it as a “trusted partner.” Pantone reiterated that it had agreed to include a curated set of Pantone color libraries in Adobe Creative Cloud, just not all its colors."