The Sound of Colour

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The Sound of Colour. We often spend time educating people in the principles of how human beings see colour. It is well known that there are sometimes significant variations from one individual to another, from those with colour blindness to those with tetrachromacy or enhanced colour vision. In this TED.com infographic, colour blind artist Neil Harbisson’s “eyeborg” kit is visualised in a fascinating way. He “hears” colours using a headset that converts light into audible frequencies, meaning he can even “hear” beyond the visible light limitations. An interesting question: could industrial colour measurement technology be developed in this direction?

There’s more to it than meets the eye!

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                                                                          For my first day here at Colourserve for my work experience placement. I was a bit sceptical as to why all this was relevant, and why all this kit was needed for the industries. I could never really see it at first. But I guess that’s because I never looked hard enough, taking colour for granted, I was trying to see the difference...

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Colour Industry Best Practice

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1. Assessment of the Performance of a Colour Measurement Instrument 2. Viewing Cabinets for the Visual Assessment of Surface Colour Colour industry best practice documents as issued by the Society of Dyers and Colourists. As a member of the Colour Management Council of the SDC, we fully endorse these documents and encourage all in the industry to use them accordingly.

Colour changing material: A challenge to the colour industry

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Polymer Opals Wired.co.uk reports on a new material developed at Cambridge University NanoPhotonics Centre which changes colour depending on how it is manipulated or s t r e t c h e d. This is achieved by “printing” 200 nanometre spheres, whilst modulating the voltage during the process. Advanced Engineering Materials has a more detailed background to the technology. How will these materials be assessed using current methods in QC e.g. lightboxes and spectrophotometers? A future challenge for the colour industry… Image (C) Cambridge University NanoPhotonics Centre

Web design and colour blindness

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Web designers need to understand the science behind colour blindness in the same way as colourists and industry professionals. Colour blindness is not a problem as long as you understand how it affects individuals and compensate accordingly. This can be done using standard tests or simple colour science that is in the public domain. The point is, don’t assume everyone sees colour in the same way because  up to 8% of males are affected by colour blindness. In the colour industry it is simply not acceptable for colour blindness of any kind to be overlooked. Anyone involved in visual colour...

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What exactly is colour metamerism?

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How do we define metamerism in the colour industry? Here is a comprehensive scientific definition of colour metamerism on Mal’s Colour Science site. In practice though, metamerism is often mistakenly used to explain colour difference or a lack of consistency in results when measuring colour. It can be argued that there are different kinds of metamerism (as in the definition on Mal’s Colour Science). In many applications it may be more practical to refer to illuminant metamerism as the true definition, because the other kinds don’t have a commercial implication or because the full scientific definition is too complex to understand in a fast moving,...

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Newton and colour

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Although everyone will know the name of Sir Isaac Newton, many will only know him for his Principa Mathematica which laid down the foundations for laws on universal gravitation. Colour people know Newton for different reasons; refraction of light, the colour spectrum and optics theory are all derived from Newton’s research in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Newton’s Theory of Colour and colour wheel directly influenced the groundbreaking work of Albert Munsell, whose colour system is widely used in industrial colour control and measurement today. We owe Newton a debt of thanks for the beginnings of a truly scientific approach to  measurable colour...

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The bumpers don’t match?

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so it turns out light boxes can be whole rooms! 25 lights with different settings like UV, daylight and streetlight are deployed in a room that can fit a car to make sure all sides are the same, because its all well and dandy that your car paint looks the same in daylight but that’s not great if they look stupid under street lamps

moving up in the world

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A small office isn’t the best place for this kind of work, but then a big warehouse isnt much better, whats needed is a bit of both, and in this new place(only a 10 minute walk away) seemingly enough has it all, and the price increase is about 3 times more for 10 times the space, which is crazy. It also seems like the customers are treated better than anyone else by the landlord, another positive. All in all it seems like a great opportunity to expand the business and allows colourserve to do what it is meant to do; but more efficiently

delivery boys…

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Its not all about the chemistry of paints and service repairs in this company, sometimes you just have to be deliver boys and collectors, which is actually more fun than you’d expect surprisingly enough;-as long as you’ve got a van. trips are made to be fun with these pieces of hard engineered steel(or something like that, right?)