Overview

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The Fundamentals of Color and Appearance is an interactive online course, where you will gain a solid foundation in color and appearance science. From the physics of color to lighting, spectrophotometers and color data, you will learn how to measure, view, and communicate color.

This class is designed for all industries and individuals who are quality control and assurance professionals, lab technicians, parts suppliers, manufacturing specifiers, designers and anyone who evaluates or approves color.

Syllabus

Course Introduction

Welcome to the Fundamentals of Color and Appearance! Created directly from X-Rite's in-person seminar series, this course will provide you with a solid foundation and understanding of color and appearance.

Color Communication

When we describe color to another person, our mind creates a mental picture of the color we are trying to communicate. That person will formulate their own mental picture of that same color, which can lead to subjectivity, misunderstandings, and rework. In this first section, you will learn more about the impact of ineffective color communication and how individuals differ in their perceptions of color.

Visual Color

There are a number of other factors than can affect how we perceive color, such as background effects, color deficiencies, lighting, and even age. We will explore these in this next section, as well as learn about the history of visual color systems.

What is Color?

In the first two sections of this course we learned a lot about our eyes and tied everything together with a close look at the work done by Albert Munsell. We now know, beyond all doubt, that color is three-dimensional. In this next section, we will start to get a bit more scientific and learn about the three elements of color. Don’t worry, you will not need to learn the math; however, it is necessary that you understand the history that makes it possible to accurately and reliably measure color.

Measured Color

Now that we know the elements needed to see color, it’s time to understand how everything connects together. We will begin this section by exploring some experiments that characterize how the human eye responds to light and how this translates to the way instruments see color. Finally, we’ll look at how to effectively communicate color differences, including different methods of color tolerancing.

Instrumentation

There has been tremendous research into the measurement of color and the ability to control color. Today’s color instruments are more widely and easily used than early color instrumentation. In this section, we will examine how color measurement instruments work. We’ll also take a look at the different instrument geometries and when it is appropriate to use them.

Developing a Good Quality Assurance Program

There are other important factors to consider when developing a color quality assurance program. Good color is a commercial endeavor critical to both suppliers and customers. As we have seen, there is a large set of variables to track and control. Depending on the level of sophistication required and your specific workflow, you may develop a color control program based on visual analysis or one which employs color measuring instrumentation and software. Despite which approach you take, you must define standards and rules for color measurement success.