You Can’t Control What You Can’t Measure

In the packaging world, establishing the customer's or brand owner's expectations is the first step to matching color. "Some use a tight tolerance and some are very loose about it," Wallace explains, "but instrumentation can't tell you how to feel about a color. That can only be done by asking the customer to assess the printed matter inside a light box to determine which samples are pleasing and which are not." Once the samples have been winnowed down, instruments are employed to document the L*a*b value of the sample against the L*a*b of the reference to determine the deviation of the color from the standard (delta E).