Measuring Unusual Things: The Stories

Our recent customer survey resulted in more than 40 stories being submitted about the most unusual things our customers have measured using X-Rite instruments. We have chosen a few for your reading pleasure. Enjoy and be inspired!

Paint & Coatings

Tree Bark

A gentleman brought in several pieces of tree bark that he wanted matched into an exterior flat paint so he could paint all of his deer blinds for hunting. The color was a perfect match!

Old Brick

A customer brought in an old, moldy brick. It was a grayish brown color that wasn't even uniform. He loved the color and wanted it matched in one of our products!

Doggedly Pursuing Color

I had a customer come into our paint store and ask me to match the color of her golden retriever. When I asked her what part of the golden retriever she wanted me to match, she said the tail. Once the tail stopped wagging, I matched a color as best as I could, and the customer was very happy with the outcome. It just goes to show you that you can measure color on anything.

Print & Packaging

Labeling Beverages

At one time in my color career, I was a color matcher for a pressure sensitive label printer. My responsibility was to custom formulate inks for the presses, matching targeted Pantone colors, as is typical. However, my task was to match a final shade by incorporating the color of the customer product located INSIDE the clear bottle. I had to measure the color of tea, beer and a host of other liquids to consider and add in when formulating the final shade. Most of the press guys thought the final formulated dyes they were using were way off shade when applied to the clear film prior to application onto the bottle containing product. Once applied onto the bottle, then the shades all come together. Most of the time...

Inspirational Nail Polish

The most unusual request actually came from my wife. She started up her own Hair Salon, and being a designer I had no choice but to design her logo and business card. After asking her numerous times about what Pantone Matching System colors she wanted to use and chopping and changing several times, she came to me with these bright pink painted nails and said, can you match it to this? I was able to take a clear photo of her nails and use the X-Rite device to measure the color and then created a swatch, which matched fairly close to the nail color. But without the X-Rite instrument, I would still probably be chasing my tail with it all.

This Takes the Cake

A few months ago a large chain grocery retailer wanted us to match our inks to their frosting color choices available in their Bakery Department on their cakes. I scanned actual bags of frosting using my X-Rite 530 spectrophotometer to capture precise color readings. The 530 was connected to a PC with X-Rite ColorMaster software. If I did it today, I could use my X-Rite eXact to get an even better result!

We had many more great stories of how X-Rite color measurement solutions have helped our customers exceed expectations. Watch for more of these stories as we move into 2017!