O que é colorimetria e quais são as vantagens para o processo de impressão?

What is colorimetry and what are the advantages for the printing process?

What is colorimetry?

Colorimetry is a science that quantifies and physically describes the human perception of color. The existing standardized colors have worldwide scales, with Pantone being the best known.

This perception of colors depends on three main factors: lighting (intensity or brightness), the person observing and the object in question.

The perception of color by the human eye and interpreted by the brain is divided into four levels: physical, psychophysical, psychometric and visual. Therefore, some tools are used to determine the tone more accurately.

When talking about what colorimetry is, it is important to emphasize that this science uses a mathematical code for each color, functioning as a GPS. And its tools with colorimetric functions are: colorimeters, spectrophotometers and spectrodensitometers.

But the study is based on three colors: red, green and blue, as a kind of standard. The printing system uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

Color management

Color management means using measuring equipment, software and some predefined procedures to maintain repeatability and uniformity of colors from the beginning to the end of the printing process. Color profiles are inserted into color treatment, vector drawing, layout and printer software.

In this way, the colors involved in a given process are accurately measured, following the RGB or CMYK scales.

Colorimetry evaluation methods

To understand more about what colorimetry is, there are two evaluation methods: visual and instrumental. This is because products need to have a certain certification to ensure that what is being delivered is correct and in accordance with standards.

In the visual method, the ideal would be to evaluate the color according to the conditions imposed by the client or designer, but this is not always feasible. Therefore, it is necessary that the observation conditions are clearly defined between the parties and that they are standardized by international standards.

In instrumental methods, the tools mentioned at the beginning of the text are used – the colorimeter and the spectrophotometer. Now that we know what colorimetry is and how to evaluate it, we need to better understand how it can help in the printing process.

Advantages of colorimetry for the printing process

It is possible that when using the same technology in printing, the colors will be different. Therefore, there are several advantages to using colorimetry, starting with the reduction in material consumption. There is also a reduction in the occurrence of errors, an increase in color repeatability and productivity, in addition to the stability and final quality of the prints to satisfy all customers, including the most demanding ones.

This process can be applied to print tests, equipment calibration and special colors, and color identification from samples.

Now that you know what colorimetry is and how it can make a difference to your prints, keep following our blog for more content like this.

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