India n Journ lll of Fibre & Textile Research

Vo l. 21, March 1996, pp. 64-68

Recent developments in colour measurement and colour management

AD Sule
C hemical Technol ogy Di visi o n. Ahmedabad Tex tile Industry's Re search Associa tion. Ahmedabad 380 015, Indi a

Developments during the past five years in the field of computer colour measurement , specification and
recipe prediction have now reached a very high level .of accuracy and reproduci bility . These developments
haye facilitated colour communication , harmonization and reproduction for the first time. The most interesting appl ications of these developments are on-line colour measurement coupled with process monitoring
and reproduction of colour on the monitor of the computer. Software for prediction of recipes today incorporates artificial intelligence. Dispensing of dye powdef; paste or solution using colour matching computer is
now a state-ol~the-art. This article reviews these developments which have benefited nO[ only the colourist
but al so the designer and the management.
Keywords: Colour meas urement. Colour system, Colour management, Colour matching, Colour
communication, On-line colour control

1 Introduction
Owing the past five years, colour measurement
and colour man age ment have undergone considerable metamorphosis. This is realized when one looks
back to review the landmarks in these areas in this
century. At the outset of this Century, dyers were not
able to communicate colour of any sample accurately
and had to resort to colour atlas.
From 193 I- thanks to the efforts of the CIE- they
were able to specify any colour objectively with respect to specific illuminants and two-degree standard
observer in terms oftristimulus values X Y Z. Colour
co uld be represen ted by coordinates x &ycomputed
from X Y Z. However, the x ,)' co lour space was not
uniform . A little later, opponent colour coordinate
sys tem was deve loped for obj ective specification of
colou r in tenns o f Lab coordinates. In 1964, the CI E
acce pted the co lour matching functions of spectrum
colours for a broader fi eld of vision, i.e. from two
degrees to ten degrees. A decade late'r, the elE sta ndardized the o pponent co lo ur coordinate system and
accepted linear transformation equa li o ns for comp'uting L*. a*. h* from X Y Zva lu es. This 'C IELAB'
colour space was much mo re unifonn than that obtained with x. r coordinates. Yet. when colo ur differe nce
was computed fro m C I E L *. a*. h* va lues, ma ny lacunae were observed. Du ring the eighties, considerab le
work was carried o ut on improvi ng the co lou r difference equat ions, acc urate measurement of colo ur a nd
interpret in g the data for various app licati o ns, e.g.
o bjecti ve specificatio n, pass-fail , shade so rt ing,
shade sequencing. shade sea rch , whiteness/ yellow-

ness indices, dye strength and tone analysis besides

recipe prediction and analysis. Colour systems proliferated during the eighties- thanks to the very rapid
strides in the development of personal computers, i.e.
PC-A Ts. Despite these developments , the instruments lacked the desired accuracy and reproducibility.
Also , inter-instrumental harmonization was very
poor a nd this was the biggest lacuna in reliable colour
communication.
Du ring the last five years, there has been a significant progre5s in in strumentation and software, thus
making integ rated colour systems very powerful in
colour analysis , communication and management
work. Thi s article reviews these developments
briefly.

2 Integrated Colour Measuring/Analysing

Instruments
Spectrophotome ters 'and colorimeters displayed
at ITMA-91 have been described by H o lme l - 3 a nd
others 4 . Holme S made a survey of various colour management related equipments including the spectropho tometers, e.g. Spectroflash SF 500, Color QUEST
II, Ultra sca n XE, Mi ni scan, Color Eye 7000 a nd so ftware acco mpanying it. Some compact spectrophotometers s uch as MacBeth' s Co lor Eye 2445 and Datacolor's D a tafla sh 100 have a lso been described 6 .
Su le 7 . 8 gave a n exha ustive account of various spectrophotometers used in the integrated colou r systems
and th e software accompanying them. A ra nge of colour sensors from J uki Corpo ra ti on have been repo rted in an ar ticIe 9 . Dr Bruno Lange's Luci 100 spectro-

SULE: COLOUR MEASUREMENT & COLOUR MANAGEMENT

photometer has also been dcscri bed briefl y I o. T his is a

pulsed xenon a rc type spectrophotometer with d/8
geometry covering a range 380-720 nm . A colour control system based o n Color Eye 2145 spectropho tometer and Optiview softwa re has been marketed by M acBeth II. I t is a pulsed xenon a rc based model and the
Optiview softw are runs in the Microsoft Windows
environment. Hunterlabs have also introduced new
versatile software packages SU-Form and SUS-can for colour formulation and quality contro!l 2.
They are compatible with Hunter range of spectrophotometers.
Recently, there has been a spurt in the use ofportable hand-held models of colour measuring instruments. These have been reviewed by Sule? and Samant and Deshpande l 3 .
The Spectra Systems Colour Management Corporation has developed special softwares, viz. SpectraMatch and SpectraQC, for Minolta portable spectrophotometer to increase its versatility14. Datacolor International recently introduced its Dataline portable
spectrophotometer. It is based on pulsed xenon arc
and has data storage capacity and a double automatic
traverse for taking colour measurements along the
entire width of the fabric. In case of a fault, it activates
the closed circuit camera for transferring the image of
the fault onto its CRT display15. Meanwhile, MacBeth, a division of Kollmorgen Instruments, have interfaced Optiview software with ColorChecker- a
portable spectrophotometer 16 . MacBeth have also
added another shade sorting software to this spectrophotometer-ColorChecker 545- besides introducing another portable model Color Eye 3100 (ref.
17).
3 Applications of Colour Measuring Systems

Integrated computer color systems (ICCS) deal

with a variety of colour analysis applications in the
dyestuff, textile, paint, plastics and other fields. Several articles have appeared on these applications recently. Those of interest to textile processors include a
comprehensive review by Sule 18 on ICCS and computer colour matching (CCM), ~ Shah and Taraporewala \9 on the saturation values of some disperse dyes, by Gulrajani et at. 20 on CCM on silk, and by Samanta 21 on CCM on jute and in textile dyehouse. Stokes
and BrilJ22 have suggested an algorithm for speedy
computation ofbue difference necessary in electronic
colour image reproduction, where millions of pixels
are counted for each image. Chronical and Nimmo-Smith 23 have described application of statistical methods for comparing hue angles of different samples.
Major emphasis in the nineties was. however, on
shade sorting. It has already been mentioned above

65

that MacBeth add ed 555 shade so rting so ftware to its

Co lo rChec ker 545 po rtable spectro pho tometer I I .
Hunterl a b ha s ann o un ced new shade so r ting software th a t ca n so rt fa brics, carpets and piece goods into
shad e groups for ra pid identifica tion of lots tha t ca n
be shipped or sewn together24. However, A spla nd
and Jarvi s 25 . 26 seem to tru st the grid-free Clemson
Colour Cluster (Ccq technique for shade sorting.
Moynahan 2 7 a lso favours thi s CC C technique. Cluster technique for shade sorting but using an approach
different from CCC has also been developed by Wa rdman el al.2 8 and Venka traj el al.29 .
Objective evaluation of shade fa stness was introduced during the last decade. There were several controversies over the methodology of assigning fa stness
rating. Recently, this seems to be coming to an end as a
result of painstaking work carried out in Switzerland.
Ri ggs 30 has crisply reviewed the instrumental methods in fastness testing. In 1989, at the ISO meeting at
Williamsburg, a formula was presented by the Swiss
and this will eventually become a stC!ndard.
At the time of writing, the BIS has circulated the
draft of this fonnulajust approved by the ISO. Shirley
Developments Ltd has now introduced the Fastrate
colour fastness rating and measuring system which
enables the automated objective assessment of shade
change or staining against grey scales 31 .

4 Colour Management Systems

Applications of CCM are taken advantage of in
complex integrated colour management systems
wherein dye recipe prediction, automatic dye powder
or paste dispensing, colour sensing and process control are done by such systems 32. Now the total computer colour management systems are being developed
and used. They have been reviewed by Thornton 33
and Wilkinson 34 . Datacolor International designs
and manufactures colour management systems. It relies on CAD to increase precision, quick response ,
just in time and total quality management in designing its systems 35.
Computer-aided design programmes can be used
for colour management in a dye laboratory. Colour
laboratory can calculate the metamerism index using
different dye mixtures, and collect and store an atlas
of colours on thecomputer 36. Stork offers for the
preprint stage an integrated system having the colour
manipulation station, co'our physics, colour measurement and prediction system alongwith a automatic
colour kitchen 3?
The effects of the various developments cited above
ha vt:: their impact on the consumer also according to
Rigb y 38.

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INDIAN J. FIBRE TEXT. RES., MARCH 1996

5 New Techniques in Colour Measurement and

Analysis
Optronik Berlin 's Multiflash M 45 spectrophoto
meter meas ures the colour of metallic a nd pea rly Ius
tre paints. The inst rument o perates with 16 measur
ing channels a nd 16 reference cha nnels in the 400-700
nm ra nge. Eight fixed angle meas urin g geometries
pennit eight independent measurements to be performed simultaneously within ju st two seco nds 39 . MacBeth 's Color-Eye 5010 Gonio spectrophotometer
performs the same ta sk and has twelve meas urin g geometries40 . A simpler colour gloss go niophotometer
is also reported 41 for mea su ring gloss o f textile fabrICS.

Today, the reproduction of colour on the cathbde

ray tube (CRT) is so advanced that even a shadow in
the fabric due to folds/ wrinkles can be detected and
this form s the basis offault qetection in the running
fabric 42 . Several such systems were on display at ITMA-95 (16-27 Oct. 95) held at Milan . Westland 43 has
reported that artificial intelligence can solve problems in colorimetry, complement existing analytica l
techniques, use knowledge base and an inference engine to make recommendations about se lection of dy-

es, dyeing process a nd method . Neural networks aid

in recipe formul a tion . Fuzzy logic determines colour
differences in non-uniform colour space and suppl ements colour difference informa tion obtained with
the CM C equation.
Controve ry ex ists over whether itera t;ve generation of spectral reflect a nce curve is meaningful and
accurate as a concept 44 . Of the new techniques reviewed , th e most a ttractive one having a lot of relevane
from the practical viewpo int is the online colour measurement. Thi s technique offers the scope for detecting va ri a ti o n in colour during processing fo r immedia te remedial action. This is a step towards ' Right First
Time' dyeing in long continuous runs. Such a system
is deployed by Ku sters in their pad batch process ing
mac hine ry di spla yed recently4 5. Thi s is illustra ted in
Fig. I.
Willis46 has revjewed online colour monitoring equipme nts. G a rdner47 defines thumb rules for se lecting such eq uipments. There are seven cri te ri a for selecting an online colour measurement system according to Gardner: They a re as follows:
Instrument geometry must measure colour without
any contact with the fabric .

I
I

"
,.
I

,
,

~-----+---1l\t1r.1~~r1

Fig. I- Electronic pad end dye control Kuster technology [I- Fabric moisture monitoring, 2 Monitoring of water content of fabric
after padding, 3--Monitoring of fabric temperature, 4-Monitoring of fabric tension, and 5-Colour monitoring across the width of the
fab ric using non-contact telespectrophotometers

SULE: COLOUR MEASUREMENT & COLOUR MANAGEMENT

Instrument must have traversing capabilities to measure side-to-side colour variations.

Instrument must withstand production environment.
Performance of the instrument should be better
than that of the laboratory equipment.
Reliability of the instrument should be better than
that of the laboratory equipment.
Reflectance values measured should be presented
only after proper interpretation in a meaningful
mannGr.
The online system should communicate with other
computer systems to maximize its effectiveness.
The research Institute for Textile Tech;1010gy at
Chemnitz has developed an automated measuring
method for inspecting multi-coloured prints over
moving lengths offabrics48 . This online colour measurement of moving fabrics from a distance is now
referred to as 'Telecolorimetry' . Pape 4 9 has described
a telecolorimeter with computer interface. It is Optronic's Teleflash capable of measuring colour at a di stance from 0.4 m to 6.5 m . Optronic's Telemes software calculates colour values and colour difference
for speedy action. The duration of the flash is just
I /2000th of a second. Similar telespectrophotometer,
called Eagle Eye, is marketed by MacBeth . It measures colour from a distance of 6 m, has 100 k W Xenon
flash lamp and a scanning range of 400-700 nm. Fabric speed or its 'water content do not affect measurements but fabric moisture content and temperature do
affect the accuracy 50 .
van Wersch 5 1 ha s described online colorimetry in
continuous dyeing. He studied the positioning oftelecolorimeter at different sites as illustrated in the flowchart below a nd suggested tha t the colour measurements just before IR pre-drying are ideal.
Start --. Padder --. Skyer --. IR predryer --. Hot flue dIying
765
Inspection +- Drying +- Washing +- Cooling
I
2
. 3
4
The numbers in the flow,c hart indicate positions
where measurements can be carried out. At positions
1-3, it is rather late to prevent faulty dyeing. At position 4, it is also late and measurements are not accurate. At position 5, measurements are inaccurate. Only
at position 6 it is accurate and timely. This is true for
position 7 also.

6 Colour Communication
Notwithstanding the claims by various instrument
manufacturers in the eighties, inter-instrumental harmonization was very poor when they were compared

67

using BCRA tiles. Today, several instruments are so

accurate that inter.instrumental repeatability is better than 0.15 CIE-DE. This enables the present generation instruments to use the reflectance data as such
or transformed to Lab or L C h or any other form for
communication. One such instrument is Spectraflash
500 of Datacolor 5 2 or MacBeth Color Eye 7000 5 3 .
However, recent advances in electronics have enabled precise colour communication by creating the
colour on CRT by feeding the reflectance or Lab or X
Y Z data to the computer. This has been used to create
pairs of colours with small colour difference by varying the Lab values 54 . 55 .
The Carisma Resea rch Project, under the U.K.
Govt. Alvey Programme, has produced significant
improvements in techniques for ensuring visual agreements between colours produced on various CRT
displays and surface colours on different media. Designer's colour concept is now a reality due to the colour
visualization software 56 . 57 . Systems have been developed for communicating colour on the CRT display
for CAD als0 58 . 59 .
Rich e l al. 60 have attempted psychophysical verification of the accuracy of colour and colour difference
simulations of surface samples on a CRT di splay.
They have concluded that average colour difference
for overall accuracy can be under 3 CIELAB units.

7 C'r,dusion
We are moving towards high precision, highl y computerized integrated colour application systems
which not only communicate colour as it is concei ved
by the designer but also reproduce it on the CRT far
away. The recipe for the colour can be worked' out by
the computer which can also di spense colour; mak e
print paste or dye solution and do process control and
monitor production. Such highly automated systems
having artificial intelligence are being perfected today. By the turn of this century they may become a
common phenomenon.
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I
2
3
4
5
6
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8
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68

INDIAN J. FIBRE TEXT. RES., MARCH 1996

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