Interesting Find, Colour matching device.

[Robert Lambie]

good find mate, will be interesting to see how it goes / works.

i have an app that does same, but as has been stated, they recon theirs is more accurate. which i can see why also…

i recon a bit of time would need to be set aside to match all your vinyl swatches you use, and some… but once done, i can see this being a valuable gadget to have… good find and thanks for sharing. 😀

[James Easton]

Hopefully the colours can be added and shared that way we can maybe upload them to the site and download from inside the app the manufacturers we need!
what app are you using just now to colour match?

[Martin Pearson]

Wonder how it compares with something like the color monkey, very nearly bought one of those a while ago.
This would work out quite expensive for me as I would have to buy myself a decent phone as well as the sensor lol

[Reza Faezi]

Sounds good, What app do you use at the moment Robert & is it any good. Colour matching can be a pain in the ar*e, especially when matching print to vinyl

[George Elsmore]

ditto what app?

[James Easton]

I don’t think rob wants to share the app name with us lol

[John Hughes]

Metamark do one which is free.

John

[Mike Hall]

Back to the original post, I could not find anything on the website about the light source used for colour measurement. The colour of an object depends on the object – and the light source. E.g Everything looks grey under a sodium street light because there is only yellow in the lamp colour. Anything not yellow looks grey.

[James Easton]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BTVf5iuCUAAIFbo.jpg:large

does that help? its all i can find about it!

[Mike Hall]

Hmmm! Not really – that looks like some normalised sensor response data – which I have to say does not mean a lot to me – my ignorance – not the suppliers fault.
I’ll maybe have a bit more of a look around.
I’ve recently been doing some light and colour output measurements and tried some reflected colour too – but using the correct light source to illuminate the object under test is critical. And impossible if the object is normally viewed under sunlight – because that constantly changes. Compare high summer with a cloudy winters day or sunset. All different. How do you select a standard from that? I dont know. you can pay a lot of money for "Standard lamps" but is the expense justified when a good pair of eyes are pretty good at comparisons. Its when you want the "sophistication" of absolute or reference figures that things get difficult.

[Martin Pearson]

Is it not the same as the sensor for the color monkey Mike in that the light source is built into the sensor that is placed on the object & no other light is allowed to enter?
Doesn’t help with what the light source is right enough lol

[Mike Hall]

Agreed.
Light source and sensor in the head – no external light to get in.
Correct – it doesn’t help. 😀

[James Easton]

Hi James,
Nix uses LEDs that try to mimic D65 Lighting as closely as possible. As you may or may not know this simulates midday sun in most parts of the world.
Thanks for the comments,
Cheers,
Matthew Sheridan

Does this help?

[Mike Hall]

Thanks for finding that out, James.
With the benefit of hindsight it was always going to be an LED.
By "uses LEDs that try to mimic D65 Lighting" I suspect they mean a 6500K LED or similar (USA is full of 7100K in the sign industry, as they were the most efficacious (lumens per watt)). an LED will only mimic D65 as that is a fairly flat spectrum. LED is a big peak in the blue, a broad peak ranging from yellow to red and a bit of a valley in between. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:White_LED.png – -this looks about 7100K to me. I’d post one of my measurements of a spectrum but I do not have any on a website. Maybe I should do something about that!

Unless they are using RGB LEDs.

I hope that they are successful – a cheap alternate to the equipment £3000 and up which is available now would be great.
The proof of the pudding…….