X-Rite Color Blog

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In the sign and display graphics business, as in many other segments of the printing industry, shorter runs and reduced cycle times can stress even the most efficient wide format printing operations. By implementing a color-managed RIP-to-roll (or RIP-to-rigid media) workflow, these operations can ensure that color is right the first time and every time to help speed work through the shop and meet color expectations. Photo by Peter Saunders Today we are share tips from our Color Experts that c...

A recent amendment to the EU Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment will remove the current exemption for mercury to be used in a number of types of fluorescent lamps for special purposes by 24th of February 2025. These bulbs are defined under clause 2(b)(4)-I of the EU REACH directive. After the expiration date, the sale of new equipment including fluorescent technology under this exemption will not be allowed in Europe. Th...

The internet is full of Top 10 Countdowns. We enjoy looking back at our most popular blogs and learning resources to better understand what interests you – our readers. We’ve been publishing our top-read learning resources since 2016, and we’re happy to see some educational topics like color perception, tolerancing, and spectrophotometers continue to rank year after year. Here’s a list of the topics our readers enjoyed most in 2023. Have you read them all? Top 5 X-Ri...

When it comes to color accuracy in the world of print and packaging, having the right tools at your disposal is crucial. We understand how overwhelming it can be to choose from a plethora of options. Fear not, for we’ve simplified your decision-making process. Here’s our list of top color match devices, each catering to different needs:   eXact™ 2 Handheld Spectrophotometer for Paper, Corrugated & Carton Boards Ideal for professionals working with paper, corr...

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the colorful world of spectrophotometers? Don't worry, we've got your back! We've put together a quick list of the unique features of four of our color match devices to help you find your perfect match. Let's dive right in! Ci7860: The Precision Prodigy The Ci7800 is your go-to if you're all about precision. With its cutting-edge technology, this benchtop spectrophotometer guarantees spot-on color matches. If you're into perfection, this one's for you....

Starbucks has once again kicked off the holiday season with four new festive cup designs. This year they surprised us with a magenta accent, which “lifts the traditional holiday colors and makes the red even look brighter,” said Kristy Cameron, Starbucks’ creative director. In the frenzy of holiday shopping, packaging plays a crucial role in catching the eye of potential buyers. However, staying ahead of the game and adapting packaging designs to align with ever-changing con...

Enhancing Automotive Aesthetics with Automotive Color Match In today's fast-paced automotive industry where innovation is the driving force, the demand for precision and perfection has never been higher. Automotive designers and manufacturers are constantly seeking ways to enhance vehicle aesthetics, while parts manufacturers and refinishers strive to match color and appearance between parts and across sites. The Significance of Automotive Color Matching The right automotive paint color not onl...

Working in prepress holds a unique challenge. Even if your color workflow is tight, everything can fall apart if the customer’s file isn’t color managed. We’ve all seen it. You receive a file that the customer claims is ready to print, yet when you open it on your computer, the colors don’t look right at all. You can’t send it to print without knowing for sure, because you’re the one who will take the hit for wasted time and materials if it’s wrong....

Perfetti Van Melle (PVM) is a multi-national manufacturer of confectionery and gum. They offer innovative local flavors for numerous renowned international brands and distribute them to 150 countries worldwide. Since their final packaging includes a mix of materials including labels, foil, paper, paperboard, and shrink sleeves, each of their global printers must achieve accurate color on every substrate to portray a unified brand presence on the shelf… which is not an easy task. PVM sele...

The environmental footprint of fashion is out of control. According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), “Textile mills generate one-fifth of the world's industrial water pollution and use 20,000 chemicals, many of them carcinogenic, to make clothes.” Fabric being dyed in factory. Image from NRDC.org.  A Problem That Impacts Everyone Did you know it takes about 200 tons of water (enough to fill several swimming pools) to produce one ton of cott...

If ensuring color consistency is part of your job description, you’ll want to learn more about PantoneLIVE. Our customers report that it helps them get products to market an average of four times faster! PantoneLIVE is an end-to-end, digital color communication ecosystem that helps everyone involved in a packaging workflow visualize and communicate color. It shows which colors are achievable, and which are not, across everything from flexible packaging to corrugated board. And, since the digital...

When all of final production packaging comes together on the store shelf, it’s a brand’s moment of truth. Do the stand-up pouches, overwraps, and corrugated POP displays match? How close is the color to its standard? We know you spend so much time and money designing, proofing, sampling, printing, and shipping… so where does the color go wrong? Is it an issue with accuracy, consistency, or both? Package designs come together on the shelf. Here you see pouches, labels, cartons, and corrugated wit...

What happens when you have more than 2,000 brand colors to manage across a complex global packaging supply chain? Things get complicated! Although it may seem easier to create a new color than to dig through databases or binders of color drawdowns to find the closest match, the problem comes later when you’re faced with a huge, unmanageable library. One of our clients, a well-known fast-moving consumer packaged goods (FMCG) company, understands how easily things can get out of control. They wer...

All it takes is 2 to 7 seconds. That's right, a tiny snapshot in time is what a consumer invests in making many purchase decisions about a product. This is the much talked about and researched “First Moment of Truth”.   X-Rite color management solutions for print and packaging deliver excellence in quality control, formulation and automation.     Color is a significant factor in First Moment of Truth, when you considered the reach it has to engage us and communi...

When someone says “apple,” do you think red, green, or yellow? What do you do if a customer asks you to produce a color using descriptions that are not specific enough? Check out how something as seemingly simple as color communication can determine whether your color program succeeds or fails. A picture may paint a thousand words, but words alone do not paint a thousand colors. Circular conversations about color happen everyday. They generally start with someone asking for a sligh...

Does your quality control program include visual evaluation? If not, it should. Using the SpectraLight QC as part of a color evaluation workflow. No matter your industry, judging color is more than just measuring samples with a color measurement device. Just because a spectrophotometer says your color is within tolerance, doesn’t necessarily mean it will look right to the human eye. To minimize customer rejects, your color control process needs to include visual evaluation in a light boo...

Like you, digitization and sustainability are top of mind. However, colour is often overlooked when it comes to textile product development. Digitizing the textile supply chain and applying colour management at each stage will ultimately pay for itself through more accurate colour, faster production, and less waste. With over 60 years of innovation and proven expertise in colour management and colour measurement, X-Rite has solutions to support everyone in the textile industry, including appare...

Print quality measurement and process control can help you achieve accurate color across print and packaging applications. Today we'll share the essential tools you need to design, formulate, and print predictable color. We’ll also walk you through the ideal process to achieve color consistency across packaging substrates throughout multiple print runs. How to Choose the Right Technology for Print Quality Measurement Whether you're printing on corrugated board, metallic foil, plastic film,...

Anyone responsible for printing goods or packaging knows that some colors, like orange, are just too difficult to reproduce using only CMY inks. A fourth color, black (K, which stands for key color) is often added to subtractive color printing applications. Since C+M+Y actually creates a muddy brownish color due to ink impurities in C, M and Y, adding a true black ink creates the deep color and tones that CMY alone can’t achieve, plus adds density to the shadows. This four-color printin...

This time of year, the internet is full of Top 10 Countdowns. It’s a tradition we’ve embraced since 1940 when the Billboard published its first chart ranking the top selling recorded songs. Since then, others have jumped on the bandwagon to highlight the most popular trends of the previous year.   We’ve been publishing our top-read blogs since 2016, and we’re happy to see some educational topics like color perception, tolerancing, and spectrophotometers continue to r...

It’s important to ensure design intent is realized each time and everywhere a product appears. But with so many variables to impact print quality, how can brands utilize suppliers around the world and still achieve consistent color? Our X-Rite Pantone Packaging Color Experts have designed a series of consulting services and workshops to help you get the most from your print, packaging, plastic or textile value chain.   Offered both online and onsite, these interactive sessions i...

With a focus on sustainability, Walmart continues to be a leader in color specification and control. Earlier this year, Walmart notified their apparel and home goods suppliers of a new certification program to combat wasted time and resources and decrease the global impact of a traditional color approval process. Since then, Walmart's Home business unit has seen many updates and enhancements to the color evaluation process to reduce processing time, shipping, and material costs. This has result...

High morale can make a tangible difference in the lives of your employees. According to Fast Company, employees with high job satisfaction sleep better at night, which leads to other healthy behaviors like eating well, working out, and better focus. These benefits of high employee morale roll over as advantages for the company, too. Healthy employees come to work more often and are more dedicated, creative and innovative on the job … which all improve the business outcome. As noted by Th...

Companies use optical brightening agents (OBAs), also called Fluorescent Whitening Agents (FWAs), to give their products a brighter, whiter appearance. Although adding OBAs creates a brighter product, the addition of these chemicals fundamentally alters the way the color is seen, which makes it impossible to accurately evaluate color by eye. Materials and fabrics that contain OBAs may appear similar in production under factory lighting, but those same products can look much different under othe...

Color plays a major role in our food choices. Many foods like Swiss cheese, strawberries, broccoli, and mashed potatoes always look the same. We know what to expect when we take our first bite. But what if your mashed potatoes were green? Would they taste different? Would you even try them? Why Color Analysis is Important for the Food Industry   There has been a lot of research about the role color plays in how we perceive and even taste food. These studies show that our judgment of f...

Digital technology is revolutionizing printing operations. However, as offset printers look for ways to improve quality, reduce costs, and increase productivity, the ink room is often overlooked. This is a big miss. If offset inks do not meet specifications, all the standardization efforts in the pressroom will be wasted. With the right tools, ink formulation can become an integral part of an end-to-end color workflow to reduce cycle time and increase profits. Today we'll outline an ideal digit...

Whether you’re choosing colors for a brand, creating palettes for a new product line, or designing seasonal packaging, inspiration is a key step in color selection. Inspiration can come from normal, everyday places, for example: A party. The grocery store. Sporting events. And of course, the great outdoors. Mother Nature has a knack for creating the most beautiful color palettes. “Colors for Autumn/Winter 2022/2023 contrast our competing desires for calm and comfort with energy boost...

Why Calibrate Your Spectrophotometer? For the most part, today’s color measurement instruments are 100% digital. In fact, there are very few analog components inside, except for the light bulbs. Although they’re more stable than their analog predecessors, their tolerances are much narrower, and they need regular spectrophotometer calibration to stay within these tight specs. Bulb Stability As you use your instrument and the bulb turns on and off, it starts to change its character. S...

You say color is important, but do you know why it’s so important? In reality, color is a critical element in the manufacturing process. Unfortunately, many manufacturers are realizing that getting color right is much harder than it used to be, and the brands they support are asking them to meet tighter tolerances. Here’s why. While advances in color technology – think metallic packaging, pearlescent finishes, custom fabrics and vibrant new colors – entice customers, the...

In 2006, X-Rite acquired the Munsell Color Company. Along with that acquisition came an important legacy of color science, color standards, and color vision analysis tools. Today we'll look back at Albert Munsell's contribution to the world of color and share the products his work has inspired to help us manage color in a range of industries, including packaging, apparel, footwear, electronics, cosmetics, home furnishings, paint, food and beverage, construction, and more. Albert Munsell's Role ...

Metallized substrates like two-piece metal packaging are expensive to produce and make print color control a challenge. While many in the metal decorating sector are resistant to embracing color measurement, it is the fastest, most accurate and cost-effective way to produce consistent color across processing plants and achieve sustainability initiatives. Today we’ll discuss: The shortcomings of visual evaluation in a color control program, The components of a digital color solutio...

Color management is a process that identifies and characterizes each device in the imaging workflow to ensure all devices are speaking the same language. As defined by the ICC (International Color Consortium), a color managed workflow is predictable, consistent, and repeatable from capture through proofing to final output.   With digital color management, everyone involved in the print workflow can reference spectral values for specified colors and check accuracy at multiple steps along the...

X-Rite Pantone is excited to exhibit at K 2022. Like many of you, digitization and sustainability are top of mind. We invite you to stop by our booth to see how an end-to-end lifecycle that focuses on color can help you: Fulfill your customers’ color demands  Ensure color consistency with varying batches of recycled raw material Accelerate material color and appearance approval Minimize color surprises at delivery Actively decrease your global footprint The Key t...

Color management has caused an explosion of opportunities for new and interesting inks on a variety of substrates like paper, fabric, ceramic, transparent, and more. To ensure you can maintain accurate color when running jobs with these new applications, you need to create a printer profile for every printer, ink, and substrate combination. X-Rite offers the right tools to make profile creation fast and easy. Color Measurement Tools  The i1Pro 3 Family has you covered for virtually any prin...

When customers are just getting started with color management, they often ask, "What is the difference between a spectrometer and a spectrophotometer?". With such a minute spelling difference, it's easy to make a quick typo and get the wrong answer for this color question. So...what's the difference? Spectrometers vs. Spectrophotometers    What is a Spectrophotometer? A spectrophotometer is a color measurement device that is used to capture and evaluate color on just about anything, in...

In this series we’ve been discussing the many factors that impact how we see color, and what we can do to ensure the color we see is accurate. Light, retinal fatigue and background effects can influence our perception of color. Today we’ll look at the limitations of the human eye and brain, and talk about how to detect these characteristics, especially for individuals responsible for evaluating and judging color. Are YOU color deficient? Read on to find out. (Spoiler alert: There’s a test at the...

There are many things that affect our ability to see color. In some cases, it doesn’t matter if the red you see is the same shade I see. A barn is a barn, right? But for those who work in an industry where color evaluation is part of the job, it IS important… VERY important. In our color perception series, we’re discussing the many factors that affect how we see color and what colorists can do to ensure that the color they see is the color they are supposed to see. Today we’ll take a closer look...

As the temperature of light changes, so does our perception of color. As I mentioned in our last post, light plays a huge role in the way we perceive color. Today we’ll look at the science of color in manufacturing and photography; specifically how an object’s reflective and absorptive properties and viewing technology can impact the colors we perceive. To reflect or not to reflect… that is the question. The colors an object absorbs and reflects is determined by its material – is it metal, plas...

Benchtop spectrophotometers measure in transmission and/or reflectance mode to capture and quantify color on opaque, transparent, and translucent samples. Reflectance spectrophotometers measure color by flashing light onto the surface of the sample and measuring the percentage of spectral reflectance of different wavelengths at 10 nanometer increments. This blog explains how a spectral reflectance measurement works so you can determine if it will meet your color measurement and quality control ...