Color Science

Color defined by CIE

The International Commission on Illumination or (CIE) uses numeric values to define a color. I wasn’t crazy about the CIE web site and instead suggest good old Wikipedia for a more in depth education. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space

a. Lightness (L*) A value for how light or dark the color. Lower values indicate darker color and white has a Lightness of 100.
b. Chroma (C*) A value for brightness or saturation. Low Chroma values would be white, gray or black shades.
c. Hue (H*) A value for the Shade or Cast of the color. Cast of a color like red, green, blue, yellow, violet, etc

1. A Spectrophotometer is the equipment that will “read” a color and provide the numeric values for Lightness, Chroma and Hue.
2. Establish the numeric values for your color standard.
3. Now, Read the values for the lastest sample and compare it to the values for the standard.
4. The submit is accepted or rejected based on the variance allowed from your customer. In 2005, the Walmart tolerance was less that DE 1.1 (CMC 2:1).

There’s much more information about color. Actually you can get a 4 year degree in Color Science and probably a Masters and Doctorate.

All for now,

Sincerely,
The Underwear Maven
http://www.keylargounderwear.com/servlet/StoreFront