Color Measurement on Metalized Substrates

Because 45° instruments “see” color in the same way as the human eye, they are generally preferred for applications such as measuring color on matte or textured surfaces.

Sphere (or diffuse/8°) instruments can provide reflectance measurements in two ways: specular-included and specular-excluded. A specular-included reading includes the gloss component (Fig. 4), whereas a specular-excluded reading excludes the gloss component (Fig. 5). As we have seen before, 45° spectrophotometers are only capable of specular-excluded readings.