Color Matching With Your Smart Phone?
John R Kowalski
Head of Marketing @ BYK-Gardner Instruments → Brand Strategy, Multi-Channel Campaigns, Go-To-Market Plans → 25+ Years → Led Global Marketing Transformations for Startups, Mid-Sized Businesses, and Fortune 500 Companies
Your smart phone may not be color blind, but it definitely is color challenged when it comes to remembering an exact color that you want to use for a wall paint or carpet.
Apps that use the smart phone camera for color matches are convenient and often free, but they have major shortcomings because the cameras aren’t designed to be used as colorimeters for selecting paints, textiles or flooring.
Smart phone are remarkable at taking crisp photos using lens opening of only a couple of millimeters in diameter under a wide range of lighting conditions – without having to determine white balance and other critical settings. To do this, engineers have written software that automatically sets parameters to make the photography quick and convenient. But the settings — and assumptions — for easy general photography often are at odds with the best methods for precisely measuring a single color.
One international paint manufacturer that offers a free smart phone app for color matching recommends that users take photos from a distance of about a meter, stand so as not to create a shadow, take the picture as perpendicular to the surface as possible, and ideally use natural daylight for illumination. Even then, hope for the best – each smart phone has different camera settings.
With instruments and systems like the COLOR MUSE, it’s all factored into one system that measures color accurately in two seconds at the right distance, direction and illumination.
So while a smart phone is great for capturing a funny cat video, it’s not the right choice if you are ready to spend hundreds of dollars on a project for your client or in your home.
Founder and CEO at Nix Sensor Ltd.
8 年If you want a $15 OFF coupon for a better product at a better company feel free to use "MOREOFF" at checkout at www.nixsensor.com Have a great long weekend everyone! :p
Head of Marketing @ BYK-Gardner Instruments → Brand Strategy, Multi-Channel Campaigns, Go-To-Market Plans → 25+ Years → Led Global Marketing Transformations for Startups, Mid-Sized Businesses, and Fortune 500 Companies
8 年Great comments here, folks... if you're interested, here's a $10 off discount code (JK20) for our new COLOR MUSE device. https://colormuse.io... Enjoy and I look forward to hearing your feedback.
If only my phone could double as a spectroradiometer, I might even go up to $4.99 for that app. ;-)
Senior Vice President Communications at United Freelancer's Alliance LLC
8 年People in the Graphic Arts world who have experience and common sense when judging color, will first use an updated PMS book......Press the easy button now! There are always clients or people out there who are just looking for pleasing color. We all know someone like this, they will say "Make it red like a cherry, or green like a bean" or "Just make it pleasing color and run with it, no need for proofs" In this case, the smart phone or the soft proof is their easiest choice.
Color Science Consultant and Adjunct Professor at Clemson University
8 年First, let me state my credentials. I am a color scientist and applied mathematician. Around 1995, I spent two years with a team of three or four skilled engineers trying to get accurate color measurements out of an industrial RGB camera. We had full control over all the settings on the camera, the lighting, and the ambient light. We were measuring a limited set of colors (ink) on a perfectly flat surface. We gave up and built a spectrophotometer. RGB camera do not have the same color response as the human eye. I wrote an entertaining and informative blog that provides a simple demonstration of the fact that the a cell phone cannot measure color accurately. https://johnthemathguy.blogspot.com/2014/07/rgb-into-lab.html