Another aspect in addition to what others said: digital color libraries are generally available for free or low cost.
- Pantone recently removed its color libraries from Adobe products to make them an additional subscription of $14.99/month
- Pantone colors are always a subscription on color readers/spectrometers unless you buy X-Rite's high end readers. RAL is available for free on most color readers.
- NCS is a bit between RAL and Pantone in that regard, they sell an affordable color reader (for its full spectrum capabilities) that includes the NCS library, but it is a paid subscription for other readers, albeit cheaper than Pantone.
