How to Ensure Effective Color in Today's Manufacturing Processes

Scientists describe color as the quality of an object with respect to light, but the human response to color is emotional — and when designers use it skillfully, color creates the harmonious balance and appeal that helps sell everything from personal care products to automobiles to wallcovering. Precisely because of that blend of science and emotion, color remains difficult to manage across the entire manufacturing supply chain: much can happen to a color between the moment a designer creates it and the moment it is inspected on a factory floor. This article, by Shawn Mulligan of Datacolor, covers the technological advances in color matching and color quality control, and how an integrated color communication system benefits the whole supply chain, quite literally from mind to market.

The article is a companion to the Color Standards directory in the resources above and to the wider Fashion section. Its lessons apply wherever color is specified and produced, from the design studio to the factory floor.

The Way It Was: A Short History of Managing Color

Describing color has always been a subjective and expensive process for everyone involved in producing it, and suppliers — particularly those separated by time zones and language barriers — experience the most difficulty. In the 1980s, manufacturers alleviated some of those difficulties by measuring physical standards with a spectrophotometer in one location and distributing the color of that standard to other locations as spectrophotometer data, in the form of spectral reflectance curves. A physical sample was still needed for visual reference, but approval of batches was by the numbers.

Yet challenges remained. Regardless of how many numbers are assigned to a color, we do not see in numbers. A verbal description does not precisely help us visualize what another person means by fire-engine red, because color is both a physical and a psychological response to light. When a pigment such as titanium oxide strongly scatters light, it yields a white effect; when another pigment absorbs certain wavelengths, it produces a colored effect. On top of the physics, each viewer brings a different response to the same stimulus, due to age, fatigue, color vision defects, gender or experience.

Consider the typical scenario: the designer struggles to communicate precisely the color envisioned, using physical samples and describing how the proof should vary — warmer, brighter, bluer. The colorant supplier tries to match each sample but still does not satisfy the specification, because the sample is only a starting point, the feedback about it is subjective, and the sample given to match may not be the same substrate or pigment coloration as the final product. The medium matters too: whether a color is opaque or transparent, matte or gloss, flat or round, plastic or paper affects perception of the finished color as surely as any other consideration.

Embracing the Entire Color Cycle

The color cycle is as complex as it is encompassing. To a designer, color speaks to aesthetics and identity; to a manufacturer, color is precise and tangible. Designers want flexibility and creativity, while production needs an exact target and direction to deliver first-run quality. Advances in color technology use web-based solutions to address both approaches and to capture the complexities of color completely, accurately and electronically. A web-based color communication system delivers correct color approval throughout a supply chain not by duplicating efforts, but by streamlining and enhancing the color processes already in place — shortening time to market, reducing costs and improving color quality.

In practice the cycle runs in five steps. First, a manufacturer selects a color standard and measures it on a spectrophotometer. Second, the standard appears as a digital image on a computer monitor calibrated for color accuracy. Third, the standard is sent electronically to the supplier, where trial color samples are produced and measured. Fourth, the supplier sends back a digital sample of its best possible match, which is compared with the standard on the calibrated monitor; if the match is not accepted, more matching is requested and digital samples are sent until the manufacturer approves. Fifth, the manufacturer receives the final lab sample, usually in less than half the time of a traditional trial-and-error process. The powerful point is that color can now be communicated digitally and assessed visually: the receiver sees precisely the color on screen that corresponds to the colorimetric data, and visual tolerances can be evaluated and set realistically — everyone can see, for example, how far a spectrophotometer reading such as 1 CMC unit is from a particular standard.

How Smart Is Your Software?

The electronic color channel does not completely change traditional color control; it streamlines and enhances it, using familiar tools — advanced spectrophotometers and the latest color management software — inside an innovative virtual color environment. Color matching shows the gain clearly. The goal is always to be on-target and on-color without correction, yet hours of production time can be spent bringing batches on shade without tools that accommodate real-world variables. Different gloss levels between batch and standard can easily translate into expensive rejections, particularly in darker colors, and the variables are compounded by special-effect pigments: mica-based pigments, which create pearlescent and iridescent finishes, manipulate the behavior of light reflected from a surface, and iridescents actually change hues and shift shades — the very characteristics that make these high-end coatings desirable are what make them so difficult to produce in a first-run match. Modern color matching technology can accommodate even metallic-based and pearlescent coatings.

When evaluating color matching software, look for five things. Significantly reduced color-matching times — some software, such as Datacolor's Pearl color matching software, exhibits first-shot matching rates of up to 90 percent and lab trial reductions of 50 percent. Reduced raw material costs — check specific functionality, such as how well the software stores recycles as formulas and colorants, whether it is automatic, and whether operators can characterize recycles by a single measurement. Quick and complete color specification and communication with customers and suppliers — examine how the software works with color quality control and measuring instruments, and whether it links all key parties in a comprehensive network. Minimized waste and downtime — check how operators bring difficult colors such as metallics on shade in production, whether batch adds are calculated automatically, and whether the effects of adds can be previewed before production. And increased productivity — software is limited if it is hard to learn, so look for built-in user friendliness backed by comprehensive training and support.

Color Measurement That's Well in Hand

Integrating an efficient color-measuring instrument significantly improves the whole coloring process and ensures consistency in the finished product, but portable instruments long carried a cumbersome user interface: switches toggled in a precise order to customize sample names and screen selections, and software tools that went unused because they were too difficult to navigate to. The newest portable spectrophotometers depart radically from that pattern by using PDA-driven technology. A stylus tap inputs custom sample names or changes evaluation screens, speeding evaluation while reducing errors in sample identification and selection. PDA technology also brings memory and storage capacity: where handheld software was once confined to basic quality control functions — simple color difference, pass/fail and color indices — a PDA-driven device such as Datacolor's Mercury 3000 can accommodate a maximum of 30,000 samples and run more complex programs that search, retrieve and manipulate the large databases that PC-based quality control and formulation systems generate.

Ensuring Precise On-Screen Reproduction

As advanced as the other components may be, the key to superior electronic color communication is reproducing color precisely on screen. Once a standard has been selected, matched and measured, it is reviewed in a virtual color environment, and the efficacy of the whole system rests on monitors calibrated so precisely that a user can make the same decisions viewing electronic images as when viewing physical samples. When evaluating an electronic color system, look for these capabilities: a single monitor that repeats color day after day with the same precision; calibration that is device independent, so accurate conversion between computer-based color data and colorimetric data (RGB to CIELAB) works with virtually any brand of monitor and color can transfer between monitors; convenient tools to create, edit and visually compare colors on screen; software that automatically computes the right colorimetric data — the digital signature of the color — once the on-screen color is created; and the ability to accept spectrophotometer measurements and instantly transform them into visual color on screen for evaluation or adjustment.

The resulting digital sampling lets users create or evaluate color electronically and avoid the time-consuming, costly method of mailing samples between sites for approval — ground-breaking across all industries, and particularly important where accurate color reproduction is critical to a quality product. Color standards can be archived digitally, eliminating problems of fading, transfer or handling, and approved digital color data is ready for color matching or quality control software, and automatically available to the printer or other end user. In manufacturing, color is a fundamental indicator of quality: delivering off-color material risks future business, and failing to get color right the first time drives up labor and raw material costs. With competition increasing and products reaching market in record time, delivering on-spec color faster and more efficiently matters more than ever — which is why the latest color technology, housed in a virtual color environment, delivers new efficiencies across the complete production cycle, from mind to market.

About the author: Shawn Mulligan is Marketing Manager of Datacolor, Inc., an industry leader in color management and color control for the textile, paint, printing, plastics, coatings and digital color industries. Datacolor is located in Lawrenceville, NJ. The production processes this system serves are covered in dyeing and finishing, printing clothing and fabric and quality testing, and the commercial side in clothing merchandising. Designers researching color work can also browse Designer Search and the fashion industry articles archive.