Precise Onscreen Color: the Key to Virtual Color Control in Today's Plastics Processes
A White Paper by Datacolor
The latest advances in color technology utilize the power of the Internet to control color with accuracy never before possible. For plastics applications of all kinds, as well as those that supply them with color, this yields many benefits. Everyone throughout the plastics supply chain benefits from shortened time to market, costs reductions, and an overall improvement in color quality.
Color technology developers, in effect, have adapted many of the best strategies from CRM-driven supply management and applied them to the management of color for a wide range of plastics applications. The emphasis moves from color measurement as a discrete function that must be duplicated again and again through each stage of design and production, to a computerized system for highly accurate color communication in digital format.
Onscreen color reproduction: the heart of the new virtual color environment
How exactly does it work? Much more than a reconfiguration of existing hardware and software, the new system utilizes familiar tools such as color-measuring instruments as well as color management software. It incorporates traditional and innovative elements into an overall system that leverages Internet access, calibrated computer monitors and accurate visualization of digital color information.
The key to providing superior color communication in an electronic medium, however, is precise on-screen color reproduction. This is made possible by a high degree of monitor calibration and the right color control software designed specifically for this medium.
The monitors in the new virtual supply network are calibrated to such a precise extent that a user can be confident of making the same decisions when viewing electronic images that would be make viewing actual physical samples. A single monitor must be able to repeat color day after day, with the same precision. Moreover, the calibration must be device independent so that accurate conversion (from computer-based color data to colorimetric data, or RGB « CIELAB) is permitted using virtually any brand of monitor. This enables transfer of color between any two monitors, as well.
The many benefits of digital sampling
Users should be able to conveniently create, edit and visually compare colors on screen. Once the on-screen color is created, the software, in turn, should automatically compute the right colorimetric data. This is the digital "signature" of that color. The system should also accept measurements by a spectrophotometer and instantly transform the data into visual color on the screen for evaluation or adjustment.
The resulting digital sampling brings an ability to create or evaluate color electronically and to avoid the time-consuming and costly traditional method of mailing colored samples back and forth between sites for approval. Digital sampling technology breaks new ground across all industries, but is particularly important in plastics applications where accurate color reproduction is critical to the delivery of a quality product.
Streamlining the entire process
The purpose of electronic color control is not to duplicate efforts, but to streamline and enhance processes already in place. The new, Internet-based color communication system ensures quick and correct color approval throughout a typical supply chain, as illustrated by the following:
- An OEM or component manufacturer selects a color standard and measures it on a spectrophotometer (color measuring instrument).
- The color standard then appears as a digital image on the computer monitor, which has been calibrated for color accuracy. The standard is then electronically sent to the supplier, where trial color samples are produced and measured on a spectrophotometer.
- The supplier then electronically sends back its digital sample of the best possible color match to the manufacturer where it is compared to the standard on the calibrated monitor. If the match is not accepted, more color matching is requested and is done by the supplier and digital samples are sent until the manufacturer approves the color match.
- The manufacturer then receives the final lab sample, usually in less than half the time of a "traditional" color matching trial and error process.
Thanks to the latest color technology - particularly the ability to reproduce precise color on a computer screen - color standards can now be archived digitally, eliminating problems associated with fading, transfer, or handling. And the digital color data is ready for input to color matching or quality control software, as well as automatically available to the printer, or other end-user, once the colors have been approved.
Datacolor, 5 Princess Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648. Tel: 609-924-2189 ; Fax: 609-895-7472 .