Color control is a delicate process that has incredible importance across various industries. Graphics, and printing industries in particular require exceedingly accurate color management, so they use precise color measurement tools.

But few people actually know how important color measurement instruments are and what common products we take for granted. In this article, we'll delve deep into the necessity of precision in color control and various color measurement instruments.

What Is Color Control/Color Management?

Color control is extremely important in the production pipeline for digital media and printing industries. Visual media comes in many forms, such as photographs, illustrations, digitally produced art, and video content. Different devices with different color calibrations will show the same media differently.

Which is a big problem when you want to publish content with maximum color fidelity. That's where color management comes in. It's a system that ensures every device used in the production pipeline for such media has the exact same color calibration. So that editors at various stages can produce coherent and synchronized content.

Why Is Color Management Important?

 Color management is important because the technology we use to create and consume visual media is not perfect. From the input devices like the camera to the output devices like your phone's screen, there are a number of subtle variations in the mechanical side of things.

These machines can not reproduce colors in their entirety, so most focus on simply getting the colors our eyes can perceive believably accurately. This poses a challenge for editors and photographers who want to create high-fidelity media content for consumers.

Color management is a way for these industries to calibrate the production devices to achieve a standardized color profile in their workflow.

What Is The Benefit Of Color Control?

 The primary benefit of color control lies in reproducing color fidelity for a respective industry. It bridges the gap between our technology and the realistic representation of color and light. Ultimately color is an essential element for any visual medium.

Another benefit of color control is consistency. Replicating visually accurate color is a simple affair, but consistently doing it, through several different types of devices is a major challenge. Color control helps bring all devices to a consistent range. As such, color-measuring instruments are extremely valuable for several industries.

Without a streamlined color control system, it's all but impossible for an industry to grow on a global scale. Global brands need to ensure that every branch of their franchise can reproduce the same color accuracy as their main production house. Color control systems are incredibly important for such things.

What Is Color Management In Printing?

Color management is uniquely crucial for the printing industry because it has to use several stages of color calibration. A typical printing process involves the image going through a camera, then a display, then a computer, and finally a printer.

In this multi-stage process, a single-colored image has to appear on four types of visual output devices. If the color calibration between the camera, camera display, the computer screen, and the printer's settings are too far apart, then the final image will look off.

Industry professionals who require complete control over their color choices, can’t work with a system that changes their output result arbitrarily. As such, the printing industry relies heavily on a color management workflow to ensure color consistency.

And it’s not just printing papers, printing textiles such as clothing, and decorative fabrics also require a similar color management step to ensure maximum color accuracy. Color accuracy accounts for a significant portion of the appeal of a product as long as there’s design involved.

Color Measuring Instruments For Color Management

 There are several color-measuring devices used in various industries, such as the colorimeter, spectrophotometer, and light booth.

A spectrophotometer is more useful in scientific fields, and research projects to measure the color intensity to identify material components. It also sees much use in paint production facilities, and plastic and food industries.

A colorimeter is a pure color measuring tool, unlike the spectrophotometer. While the spectrophotometer measures the entirety of the color spectrum, the colorimeter only focuses on the visibility spectrum. So, it’s a much more practical tool for industries that deal with color fidelity like display manufacturers.

Color reader is also a very handy tool for accurately measuring colors. Advanced color readers come with very precise sensors and an intuitive APP interface so it's easy to use even for non-professional users.

Light booth is a far less sophisticated system compared to intricate devices like spectrophotometers or colorimeters. A light booth is essentially a controlled environment that has a standard light source. It’s a place where you can place physical objects to compare their color consistency which is hard to do in a natural setting because there are too many variables.

3nh Color Management

 3nh color management solution offers everything you need related to color and light measurement. We offer some of the best optical measurement tools across all industries. Starting from physical sensors like Spectrophotomers to AIO software solutions for color calibrating.

We have printing color control solutions for textiles, liquid and chemical color detectors for pharmaceutical and material research, as well as advanced color fidelity tools for a wide variety of displays. We also offer cutting-edge software solutions color matching, and color management.

How Do I Know Which Measurement Instruments For Color Management?

 The specific color measurement tool you need will depend entirely on your use case. If you’re a professional looking for a color management tool for a specific industry, then it’s always best to consult your peers or supervisor to understand the industry standard.

For personal use cases, you’ll want to do ample research before buying a device because such things are often quite expensive. The most commonly used device for personal use is the colorimeter, which many people use to calibrate their TV or PC monitor display to check color fidelity.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you now understand the importance of color consistency in design, branding, and manufacturing. Color fidelity is a hard requirement for such industries. Color accuracy directly affects the product appeal in various industries.

That's why most industries that deal with design elements involving colors will use some form of color management device to double-check their color quality.