Color Formulation Software

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What is Color Formulation Software?	How Do Different Industries Use Color Formulation Software?
What Are the Benefits of Color Formulation Software?	Tools for an Optimized Color Formulation System
What Makes a “Good” Color Match?	What Color Formulation Software Does Datacolor Offer?

What Is Color Formulation Software?

Color formulation software is a sophisticated tool used in various industries to precisely develop and manage dye and pigment recipes. By utilizing Datacolor’s patented algorithms to predict formulations, companies can build a vast database of color recipes. Formulation software also enables users to achieve exact color matches, develop new colors efficiently, and enhance quality control.

Many industries, including textiles, paints, plastics, and cosmetics, rely on color formulation software to maintain color consistency, reduce waste, and speed up the development process. Color formulation software typically integrates with spectrophotometers and other color measurement devices to ensure accuracy and reproducibility across different materials and production batches.

What are the Benefits of Color Formulation Software?

Using color formulation software offers numerous benefits across industries by significantly enhancing the color development process and ensuring superior quality and efficiency. Three key benefits are:

Reduction of waste
Cost savings
Time savings

To develop a new colored product, color formulation software accounts for all the variables that can influence color—dyestuff or pigment compatibility, substrate and process variations, color constancy, metamerism, etc.—to build an optimal color recipe that reduces shade corrections and minimizes overall waste of dye, pigment, colorants, chemicals, water and other resources.

Formulation software often integrates with a full suite of lab and production equipment, including dispensers, dyeing machines and spectrophotometers, to ensure accuracy and consistency in the production process.

What Makes a “Good” Color Match?

Typically, a “good” color match is one that measures closely to a set standard. Spectrophotometers are used to measure and numerically represent a color, then quality control software can interpret the difference (represented by deltaE (dE) ) between the standard and the sample.

Every company must set their own standards for what qualifies as an acceptable match since the need for precision varies from company to company and between industries. For example, many apparel companies require a dE of less than 1.0 from their suppliers. Conversely, some paint manufacturers allow a wider margin and are satisfied with a dE of 3.0.

Is it possible to achieve a close dE without spectrophotometers and formulation software? Yes, but it might take a dozen or more attempts, wasting time, money and resources, until the color is close enough to the standard to be considered acceptable. Why? Because natural variations in human color perception make purely visual assessments an error-prone process.

How Do Different Industries Use Color Formulation Software?

Color formulation software is utilized across various industries to ensure precise color recipes, enhance production efficiency, and maintain consistency of final products.

Color Formulation for Software for Textile

In textiles, color formulation software creates precise dye recipes, ensuring consistent color across different fabric batches and types and optimizing for efficiency.

For instance, a textile mill producing a specific shade of red for a major fashion brand can utilize formulation software to analyze the exact dye ratios needed to produce that shade.

Additionally, the software can predict factors such as the color fastness properties of dye stuffs, helping manufacturers select dye combinations that maintain color integrity through washing and exposure, ensuring high-quality and durable products.

Learn More About Match Textile Software

Color Formulation Software for Paint & Coatings

Color formulation software in the paint and coatings industry helps provide precise color recipes in labs based on a variety of factors including on-hand ingredients, certain properties required of the final product like hiding power or gloss, and cost of production.

For example, an architectural paint manufacturer faces the challenge of producing a custom color for a historical building restoration, where the paint must replicate a weathered, aged appearance while meeting modern durability and sustainability standards.

Using color measurement data from a spectrophotometer, formulation software can generate the exact pigment ratios needed to replicate the color, speeding up production, reducing waste from trial-and-error mixing processes, and ensuring the final product meets both aesthetic and performance requirements.

Learn More About Match Pigment Software

Color Formulation Software for Plastics

Plastics can be opaque or transparent, smooth or textured, glossy or flat, pearlescent or metallic and any multitude of hues. The dyes and colorants used to color plastic vary and may need to survive stressful fabrication processes while still achieving the intended aesthetic and performance properties of the final product. That’s where formulation software comes in.

For example, a manufacturer producing outdoor furniture needs to create a uniform color that also provides UV resistance and thermal stability to withstand prolonged sun exposure and varying weather conditions. The software determines the exact pigment and additive blend required to achieve the desired shade and properties, ensuring the color and performance are right the first time.

Learn More About Colibri Software

Color Formulation Software for Retail Paint Stores

Color formulation software in retail paint stores is an inexpensive way for retailers to match customer’s color requirements to an existing fan deck color, then formulate and dispense with high accuracy.

For example, a customer walks into your store with a fabric sample and wants it matched to a paint color. With a device like ColorReader, you can measure the color of the sample, automatically receive suggestions for the closest paint color match in your database, then formulate and dispense with Datacolor’s Paint software.

With color formulation software in the retail paint industry, your customers are satisfied with their color, creating repeat business, your employees are more efficient, and waste caused by mis-tints become a thing of the past.

Learn More About Paint Software

Color Formulation Software for Cosmetics

Cosmetics rely on color formulation software to develop products like lipsticks and foundations, ensuring precise color matches skin tones and trends while accommodating different bases and ingredients.

Because make-up goes directly on our skin, there are many government regulations that dictate the ingredients used. When new regulations are enacted, how do you quickly reformulate without slowing production or affecting the shades your customers expect? Formulation software can help cosmetic companies quickly whip up new formulas that satisfy both government requirements and customer expectations for color quality.

Learn More About Match Pigment Software

Color Formulation Software for Print & Packaging

In printing and packaging, color formulation software ensures inks and materials produce consistent colors, vital for brand identity and high-quality prints on various substrates.

For instance, a packaging company producing branded boxes for a high-end chocolate manufacturer needs to match a specific shade of purple for the logo and decorative elements. The software analyzes the desired shade and determines the exact blend of inks required to achieve the perfect shade of purple, ensuring it appears consistent across various print runs and substrates.

Learn More About Colibri Software

What Tools Do I Need for an Optimized Color Formulation System?

First and foremost, feature-rich color formulation software is essential to accurate color matching, recipe prediction, and quality control. Your formulation software should integrate seamlessly with a spectrophotometer for precise color measurement. It should also provide a user-friendly interface and customizable settings to meet the specific needs of your industry and your business.

Additionally, a comprehensive color formulation system requires support tools such as a reliable database for color data management and analytical tools for evaluating color recipe formulation performance over time. The ability to integrate with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) systems is also crucial for streamlined operations.

Regular software updates and technical support ensure optimal performance, timely issue resolution, and that you’re getting the most out of your color formulation software. The right support coupled with standard operating practices ensure that your color formulation process is efficient, accurate, and meeting the market’s demand for fast, cost-effective production.

What Color Formulation Software Does Datacolor Offer?

Generally, those who leverage formulation software are working in a manufacturing lab or production environment to develop new colors, enhance existing recipes or reformulate to meet certain requirements. Depending on your industry and workflow needs, we have several color formulation software options including Match Textile, Match Pigment, Colibri ColorMatch, Paint, and Process, Ticket, and Weigh.

Match Textile: Designed to optimize dye combinations in the textile and apparel industry, Match Textile leverages SmartMatch technology to increase first shot color matches, reduce over development of colors, and optimize ingredients for fewer lab dips.

Process, Ticket, Weigh: This software takes MatchTextile a step further and helps continuous and exhaust dyeing facilities improve efficiency and accuracy by creating optimized, rule-based production recipes and transferring them into the color lab.

Match Pigment: Optimized for pigment-based color for paint and coatings labs and cosmetics, Match Pigment features SmartMatch technology to boost first-shot match rates and Gamut Mapping to solve common colorant challenges before going to production. The Recycle feature helps you reuse mis-tinted products to reduce waste.

Colibri ColorMatch: Built to assist the plastic industry or print and packaging industry, Colibri ColorMatch helps master batchers develop new products to meet the needs of opaque, translucent and transparent plastics with an advanced matching algorithm.

Paint: Created especially for the retail paint store environment, Paint is a color search, match and dispense software that enables fast color look-up and formulation to enhance accuracy and reduce the occurrence of mis-tinted paints.

Colibri^® Cloud Platform

Formulation Software: Colibri ColorMatch

More About Formulation Software: Colibri ColorMatch