I just got this done today and the paint is identical to the color I’m repainting from previous tenants. How does this witchcraft work???
In: Chemistry
What we perceive as the color of an object is just the frequency (or wavelength) of light reflecting off of that material when it is received by our eyes. So to color match a paint, you can use a device called a spectrophotometer, which shines white light on a given sample and then measures the light that is returned from the sample. The measuring can be done in a lot of different ways, from using a simple camera with a computer program that uses brute force to match the colors to using machine learning algorithms to speed up the process to using more sophisticated measuring devices such as interferometers. Once you get that wavelength or frequency, a computer can then tell you what colors need to be mixed to match that wavelength. Again, this can be done through brute force algorithms, more tailored algorithms, machine learning algorithms, and so on.
Some of the issues that arise with these processes relate to aspects like the sheen/reflectivity of the paint, the heterogeneity of the sample, and how the sample changes in age vs. the chemical composition of the replacement paint. [This link provides a very good description for more detail. ](https://www.housebeautiful.com/shopping/home-gadgets/a225/technophobia-color-matching/) [This link is also pretty good with regard to the typical device itself. ](https://laboratoryinfo.com/spectrophotometer/)
As for the current state of the art, I would imagine that the more sophisticated commercial devices are using a variety of measuring tools along with highly tailored machine learning algorithms to look at aspects of the substrate material, density and porosity of the coating, reactions to environmental materials, and so on to make more efficient calculations and to handle all of the variations that may later come into play. That said, I’m only peripherally aware of this field so there may be other key aspects I’m missing.
Not a retail store, but the company I work for can colour match using a piece of hardware installed into a computer, it will scan the file and pulls up the pms code or other depending on the job we are doing.
Basically, computers. There is a computer scanner that scans in the object you are trying to duplicate. That scanner feeds into the computer and the computer calculates the exact color recipe that has to be made. Then the tech goes and gets the colors and measures them into the right volumes and it gets mixed together, and poof. Matched colors.
Not all colors can be matched exactly though. Sometimes the colors and amounts needed to match really aren’t available in small batches like 1 gallon.
Gotta remember, all colors are essentially made of the basic colors.
It’s really no different than scanning in a colored piece of paper on a scanner and then printing it. The color value is read by the scanner, the computer translates that into commands for the printer to mix colors to match it.
In this case they use something called a spectrophotometer (color light scanner) to determine the color value of your paint chip. That tells the paint mixing machine how much of which pigments to add to a can of white paint to achieve that color. But unlike CMYK printing, these mixing machines can have a dozen or more colors they can mix to match what was scanned.
Latest Answers