Peter Johnson wrote:

On Wed, 16 May 2007 16:29:32 +0100, Dave Fawthrop
wrote:

I am trying to get a paint to match one of the colours present in my wood
effect PVC windows. Just been to the local B&Q warehouse and found that
both the B&Q system and the Dulux system only produce standard if wide
ranges of colours, none of which are what I want. The Dulux system has a
system which scans a sample, but can only recommend and produce one of the
wide range of Dulux colours.

Clearly it would be possible to produce a system which would give an
infinite range of colours, one of which would produce a match for my PVC
windows.

Does such a system exist?

When I worked at Crown we were told that the scanner would match any
colour* but that Dulux's matching system would only produce the
nearest match(es) to a Dulux colour (or colours).

* actually it wouldn't do very dark reds/purples.

The problem is as someone pointed out if you present it with a textured
or reflective surface it fails. This is actually because our visual
system doesn't actually work on 'this wavelength of light is this
shade'. It uses all sorts of other clues, including texture,
reflectivity, speckle etc. Better to get a printed colour chart and hold
both matching object and swatch together in the same light. It is also
why apple green or grass green paint is never even close.

Peter
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