Color Meets Its Match

By Mark Smith

GRANDVILLE, MI—Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and, unfortunately, so too is the perception of color. Therefore, to be of practical use, any attempt to define or quantify colors objectively must be reconciled with the subjective way in which they are viewed. That's why effective color management is such a desirable, yet often frustrating, goal.

The full scope of the challenge was made apparent during a press briefing held recently by X-Rite Inc. at its headquarters in Grandville, MI. The event also brought home the point that the printing industry is not alone in facing this challenge.

Some industries actually have it worse, since they must deal with the added variable of the third dimension—depth. Auto manufacturers, for example, must contend with the issue of a vehicle's finish appearing different when viewed from an angle as opposed to head on.

Colorful Tools

The range of applications for color measurement devices—such as densitometers and spectrophotometers—may even hold a surprise or two for those used to focusing on print. A case in point is X-Rite's new ShadeVision system for the dental market.

Shaped similar to a handheld hair dryer, the device reads the color of a tooth and the surrounding area. Measurements taken in a dentist chair then can be passed to a dental lab to guide the coloring of bridgework, crowns, etc. to better blend in with a patient's mouth. With ShadeVision as its cornerstone, President Mike Ferrara says he expects X-Rite's bio-diagnostic's division to become a dominate market segment for the company within five years.

Building on this remote color workflow concept, there would seem to be a potential opportunity for cooperation between the various industry segments that measure the color characteristics of their products and the printers that reproduce these items in brochures, catalogs, ads, etc. There should be a way to capitalize on all the data being gathered.

For example, instead of trying to match the printed representation of a car to the transparency, why not use as a target the color data collected in the auto finishing quality control process?

Through its ColorMail product family, X-Rite has started providing the building blocks for what could be developed into a closed-loop color control system from manufacturing to marketing.

Initially, though, the company is focusing on enabling color data transfers (via e-mail) just among its own products.

Education would be a good starting point for any effort to explore the potential of such cooperation. The parties need to know what each is doing and why in terms of color measurement and control.

To help spur understanding, X-Rite recently opened a 6,000-square-foot, interactive customer center at its headquarters. Individual displays highlight the application of color measurement in the various market segments.

Staying Local

The company's headquarters also houses its custom manufacturing operations, which was another stop on the tour. The relatively low volume, high precision requirements of X-Rite's products have dictated it bring everything from machine shop to circuit board assembly operations in-house, management says.

Lastly, the press event included a preview of the company's latest product, the 939 Portable 0°/45° spectrodensitometer, which was designed specifically for graphic arts applications. According to the manufacturer, the unit features a proprietary high-resolution, 31-point spectral engine that yields an average agreement of .15 Delta-E. It can store more than 3,000 color references and samples internally, supports nine illuminant types, and offers changeable aperture sizes (4mm, 8mm and 16mm).