(Ypsilanti, MI) Color Technology, September 24-25, 2024

Schedule

• Class Start Date: September 24, 2024
• Class End Date: September 25, 2024
• Meeting Days: Tuesday and Wednesday
• Start Time: 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time
• End Time: 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time

Course Title
Color Technology

Objectives

The primary objective of this course is to provide a solid foundational understanding of visual and instrumental color assessment for industrial color production and control. This is an introductory course in which the student will gain a thorough appreciation for the three essential elements of color – light source, object, and observer – and how each of those impact visual and instrumental color assessment and control. This objective will be accomplished through a good mixture of presentations from industry experts and hands-on projects, while working in teams. The focus of the first day will be on visual assessment of color and the second day on instrumental assessment. 

Who should attend?

The course is designed for personnel in industry who find themselves responsible for color in their daily work but have not had formal training in the fundamentals of visual and instrumental color evaluation. This includes technical lab and quality control technicians, supervisors, and managers, designers, color matchers, salespeople, and marketing specialists. Students will come from a variety of industries, making several different kinds of materials, such as coatings, plastics, and textiles, for automotive, aerospace, architecture, appliances, and other materials and devices.

Course Outline

Day One

Visual color match-analysis
Visual team-application projects
Material coloring processes
Student feedback on relevant industry practices
 

Day Two

Color measurement fundamentals
Team color measurement project
Optimizing color measurement practices
Team project and class presentation

The 3 Essential Elements of Color and how each affects visual and instrumental color evaluation
Exposure to common standards on visual and instrumental color assessment, such as SAE J361 and SAE J1545.
The subjectivity of visual color assessment and how to make it more objective
Color vision testing for defects and small color difference discrimination
Sufficient and proper terminology for verbal and written communication about color
The 3 attributes of color – hue, value, and chroma – and color order systems
What is metamerism? How to recognize it? And how to minimize it?
What is a spectrophotometer and how is it used in colorimetry / color measurement?
What is a spectral curve or reflectance curve and what can we learn from them?
The development of a color space, leading up to the 1976 CIE L*a*b* space
How to understand and work within the 1976 CIE L*a*b* color space?
Using dL* da* db* vs. dL* dC* dH* in day to day work
The usefulness and limitations of the 1976 CIE L*a*b* color space
Color tolerances in the 1976 CIE L*a*b* color space and Weighted Color Distance formulas
The nature of the problem of correlation between visual and instrumental assessment