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Smart Phone vs. ColorReader EZ – Capturing True Color
One of the great things about smart phones is having a camera on hand to take pictures on the spot – whether it’s a shared moment with family and friends, a stunning view in nature or something that inspires your creativity. One thing your smart phone can’t do so well, however, is capture precise color.
Let’s say you’re out somewhere and see a piece of pottery in a shade of blue you love. You’ve been wanting to paint your bedroom and you think that color blue would be perfect, so you take a picture of the pottery and head to your local paint store where they try to match it.
And while they did a good job of matching it to the picture on your phone, you can’t help but feel a little disappointed when the paint is on the wall because it’s not exactly the color you saw – the color you really wanted. What happened here? A few things:
Color is a function of light, so the many variables of illumination come into play when you take a picture of something with your smart phone. There may be indirect light, direct light, gradient light, artificial light, natural light, the flash from your phone, stark and/or subtle shadows – these can all affect the color “blue” that appears on your phone’s camera. Your phone was designed to make it simple and easy to take photos, but it doesn’t include the best parameters for color accuracy. In fact, each smart phone manufacturer has its own proprietary software and algorithms in place to automatically adjust their own camera settings, so if you and your friends had different phones and took the same picture, at the same time, you would notice color variations between your images.
And what about those color matching apps they have for your phone? There’s a reason they all come with accuracy disclaimers – if you took several pictures of the same painted wall in your home, you would come up with different color matches due to the subtle differences in light at different places along the wall.
Which brings us to the fascinating realm of human color perception. If we looked carefully at our pottery piece, we’d be able to see the subtle differences in shades of blue based on where light and shadows fell, but our brains integrate these variations into a single blue hue we hold in our minds. This is known as Color Constancy, and ensures we perceive an object to be the “same” color under different lighting conditions. So even if we “see” that an object looks like a slightly different color under different lighting, we “know” it as a single perceived color.
Here’s why the ColorReader EZ wins out over your phone every time when it comes to accurate color matching: ColorReader EZ has a specially designed lens that responds to color much like our own eyes do, by filtering reflected light into its dominant regions of red, green and blue. The big difference between your phone and ColorReader EZ is that ColorReader EZ is designed to filter out all ambient light, allowing you to get a true color reading of a particular hue. Simply place the ColorReader EZ device on a flat surface of a color you want to match and in seconds, get the precise, top three paint color matches from the most popular paint brands. ColorReader EZ also gives you output color values such as CIELAB, RGB and HEX.
ColorReader EZ’s portable size (even smaller than your phone) makes it easy to take with you when you’re on the go, so you’re always ready whenever and wherever inspiration strikes. Keep taking great pictures with your phone and feel confident knowing you can capture the thrill of spotting that perfect color with ColorReader EZ.
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