Color Communication

Navigate to the Color Communication Topic You Want to Learn More About!

What Is Color Communication?	Why is Accurate Color Communication Important?
Why Do I Need Digital Color Management for Color Communication?	How Can I Achieve Good Color Communication Between Facilities and Suppliers?
What Tools Can Improve My Color Communication?	What Color Communication Products Does Datacolor Offer?

What is Color Communication?

Color communication in industrial applications involves sharing color data between color team members, manufacturing facilities and/or across supply chains to ensure all parties involved in color production understand the expected color of a product.

Utilizing digital color management tools and software that provide objective, fast, and accurate color data eliminates ambiguity and miscommunication, resulting in consistent color, robust quality control, and significant time and cost savings.

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Why is Accurate Color Communication Important?

Accurate color communication is important because it streamlines production, strengthens relationships between brands or manufacturers and their suppliers, and ultimately ensures customers have a consistent, positive experience with your products.

What does this mean for your bottom line?

Good color communication reduces the occurrence of errors or inconsistencies that result in lost production time, wasted materials and resources, and over-spending. It also improves trust and transparency within your supply chain and across facilities, decreasing development timelines.

How can good color communication do all of that?

When you remove the subjective nature of color perception from the equation, you’re making sure that no matter which stage of production you’re in or where in the world you’re located, everyone is working from the same set of objective color data. Good color communication leaves little room for error, meaning you can focus on a higher level of challenges, freeing up essential employees and keeping production moving smoothly.

Why Do I Need Digital Color Management Tools and Software to Communicate Color?

Since human color vision is subjective, what one person perceives and describes as “sky blue” or “poppy red” may differ from another’s perception. Everything from your age, the time of day, the lighting conditions, past experiences, your unique physiology, and more can impact how you interpret a color and therefore, purely visual color evaluation and communication alone is not enough.

So, when color is a key indicator of quality in many industries, how do you keep it consistent if your idea of “blush pink” is different than those who work in your supply chain?

How Do I Achieve Good Color Communication Between Facilities and Suppliers?

The first step toward improving color communication at the brand or manufacturer level is developing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for your organization and your supply chain to follow when it comes to color. A good SOP might include stipulations for how color is measured and by what instrument, the allowable difference between a color standard and a sample submitted by a supplier (known as the delta E), and the method by which color is communicated.

Advanced color measurement tools and software can be used to achieve and maintain accurate color standards, but without an SOP to follow, these tools can only do so much. The combination of SOPs, digital color management tools and color management software can help ensure that every product you produce consistently meets the desired hues and shades, regardless of where or by whom it was produced. This consistency is essential for maintaining product quality, brand integrity, and customer satisfaction.

What Tools Can Improve My Color Communication?

To get started with effective color communication, you need a spectrophotometer. Simply put, spectrophotometers measure a color sample and generate objective color data which is then interpreted by color management software. This enables you to set color standards. From there, all colors submitted by suppliers can be measured against that standard. When you have SOPs in place for what’s acceptable and what’s not, it’s easy to determine if the submission meets your requirements.

Color management software not only interprets color data, but depending on the software being used, it can also help you visualize, formulate, reformulate, and/or communicate color seamlessly.

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What Color Communication Products Does Datacolor Offer?

Datacolor offers a wide range of tools and software to help you achieve efficient color communication, including:

Spectrophotometers

Datacolor spectrophotometers come in two main varieties: benchtop and portables. These devices are the first step to better color communication!

Benchtop Spectrophotometers: For objective color measurements, setting color standards in a lab setting, and quality control.

Portable Spectrophotometers: For on-the-go color quality control checks when you’re on the production line.

Color Management Software

Across different industries, we have the right software to help you interpret and share color data, predict and create formulations, manage supplier color submissions, and speed up you color approval process.

Colibri: for color communication and formulation in plastics and industrial paint coatings

Tools: for color communication and quality control in a variety of industries including textile, paint and coatings, plastic, automotive, cosmetics, ink, paper and more

Datacolor Spectro 1000 benchtop spectrophotometer.

Spectro 1000 Family

Spectro 1000 delivers the highest precision in Datacolor’s fleet of benchtop Spectrophotometers and is designed for high efficiency and confidence in color formulation and quality control.

Woman seated at a table working on a laptop next to a Datacolor Spectro 1000.

Color Quality Control Software: Datacolor Tools

Enables objective analysis, reporting, communication and visualization of accurate color results.

Colibri Hub

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