Pantone® Matching System (PMS) is a colour system which gives designers a standard framework for specifying colours, and printers recipes for mixing the relevant inks from base pigments. Because the colours are made up as special inks (rather than CMYK tint combinations on the press), the process tends to be used mainly for 1- or 2-colour jobs, known as spot-colour work.
Pantone® allows for a wider variety of colours than CMYK. Whilst CMYK approximations (simulations) are available for most Pantone® colours, Pantone® colours tend to be more vibrant than their CMYK equivalents. The Pantone® system also includes certain colours that cannot be simulated in CMYK, such as metallic and fluorescent inks.