Colour Measurement Devices for Quality Control

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The ColorMeter Pro is a handy and inexpensive Colorimeter/Spectrometer that uses so-called sphere - Specular Component Included (SCI) geometry to measure samples to collect colour data, such as CIELAB, RGB or LCH from any flat surface.

It is well suited for Quality Control of Colours, where Customer and Manufacturer as well as everyone responsible for colour in the value chain all use the instrument (or at least an instrument of the same type) to measure and verify a colour of the same specific substrate that is to be ordered, whether for Paint, Textile or Print.

Note that the CIELAB values as well as RGB values collected through measurements are not appropriate for use in, for instance, Photoshop for use in design or general communication of a colour for visual judgement.
Designers and Brand Owners should only use the device to compare a colour target to a colour sample of the same type preferably or at least a very similar one - for instance Cotton to Cotton, Polyester to Polyester, Coated paper to Coated paper, Plastic to Plastic etc. to avoid mistakes.

If you are looking for an instrument better aligned with universal Print standards (45/0, D50/2° - M1) you may want to consider the ColorMeter Exact instrument - see here below.

Before investing in the ColorMeter Pro, please contact your Manufacturer(s) / Printer(s) to check their measurement standards and to have a discussion about whether this instrument may be suited for Quality Control and communication of colour.

Instruments of this type are quite common in the Textile and Paints industry, while not as common in the Graphics industry, where 45/0 /0/45 spectral instruments are more common.

If you intend to use this instrument for Quality Control of your colours at your Printhouse, it is a good idea to simply provide your contact person with a ColorMeter Pro instrument to use in their ink kitchen or even at the press for spot colour checks.

Included with the purchase is an advanced App, available both for iPhone and Android phones, which connects to the device via Bluetooth.

It is easy to measure your own Brand colour(s) or your customer's colours from a sample or guide and to store them for future use, whether they are NCS, PANTONE, RAL or SMS colours.

Users have access to libraries from NCS, PANTONE, and RAL for instance that have been measured with the instrument to quickly look up the closest colour within the respective colour systems. NOTE: Those libraries are not official libraries and thus do not come with any sort of guaranty from the respective manufacturers.

Just remember to always use the same settings and to communicate them carefully to anyone responsible for keeping your colours correct.

If you prefer to use the same Master colour for all media and to work cross-media with the absolute CIELAB values on which SMS colours are based, please consider investing in the slightly more expensive ColorMeter Exact - see here below.

SKU P50: EUR 399 excl. VAT, including shipment worldwide

Order ColorMeter Pro or contact info@spot-nordic.com to order

Spot-Nordic is delighted to offer the ColorMeter Exact Spectro-densitometer, a small but advanced 45/0 spectral measurement device, which connects via Bluetooth to your mobile phone (iPhone or Android). It is perfect for Brand Owners, Designers, Printshops and Manufacturers that are tasked with consistent reproduction of colours.

It includes the M0, M1 and M2 standards, where the M1 condition is the most important one - the condition used to measure colours printed according to ISO 12647-2-2013.

This instrument can consequently be used to measure SMS colours (www.spotmatchingsystem.com) - and to assist Printshops align the process colours for correct printing according to ISO 12647, - whether to Fogra or Gracol standards.

It enables users to measure their colours on the go and store them digitally in one place, - in their pocket and from then on to share them and do quality checks to compare new products to the same colour targets, defined by their CIELAB values. 

It is even possible to share Spectral Data (Spectral Reflectance Curve - 400 - 700nm) of measured and saved colours if required.

No longer do you have to check your products against old printed samples or printed colour guides that are most likely faded, unless they are less than 1 year old, and thus no longer a reliable standard to compare against. 

Your measured and stored digital colours - the measured CIELAB values become your new standard and you can communicate those CIELAB values to your Printer or Manufacturer so those colours can be checked and maintained during production - regardless of what it is.

Keeping track of your brand colours has never been easier.   

Included in the price of the ColorMeter Exact is a copy of the Spot Matching System Standard palette, v6 (1.738 colours) in PDF and ASE format OR a copy of the SMS MAX v6 colour palette.

Furthermore, the built-in SMS Standard v6 and the SMS MAX v6 colour libraries are included with purchases of the ColorMeter Exact from Spot-Nordic to instantly measure and find the closest SMS Standard colour to your sample - or to check how close your colour is to your target SMS colour, if you are already using SMS Standard or MAX colours for your brand or your product.

Information about the Spot Matching System and how to use it is available here.

Users of the ColorMeter Excact also have access to libraries of various other colour systems that have been measured by other Colormeter Exact users and shared in the cloud, including Pantone, RAL and NCS libraries and users can also create their own custom colour palettes from colours measured from any flat surface.

SKU P51: EUR 599 exl. VAT, including shipment worldwide

Order ColorMeter Exact (or contact info@spot-nordic.com to order

Testimony from Mr. Ingi Karlsson, the creator of the Spot Matching System, and owner of Spot-Nordic:

"While testing this small, inexpensive instrument (Exact) to see if it could actually be as accurate as promised, I tried measuring our own SMS colour ticket sample from a Fogra 51 proof we printed out about a year ago that I hand out to prospects (so it may have faded just a little bit and  the colours thus not exactly correct) .



The first colour I measured was the first in the row, the blue SMS colour. So I did the measurement with the ColorMeter Exact instrument set to M1, D50/2° - which is the standard measurement condition for measuring SMS colours to ISO standards.

I then took a screenshot and imported it into the sRGB Standard version of our Spot Matching System, called P-20.

The screenshot of the measurement is here. Here we have the CIELAB values of the colour along with the closest HEX value to the measured colour (sRGB).

After importing the above screenshot into my Standard SMS sRGB colour palette, I compared the LAB value of the blue colour SMS J-5 to the above LAB values and was disappointed to say the least when I saw that the values were COMPLETELY different.

I thought to myself "Ok, this instrument is obviously just a toy, but not a real spectral measurement device - not even a proper colorimeter".

But of course, stubborn as I can be and grinding my teeth for wasting money on a toy that my daughter would not even enjoy playing with, I couldn't resist hovering over a few other SMS colours in the colour palette and when I got to SMS J-8, I saw that it was quite close to the CIELAB values of the patch I had measured.

What I saw was this:

As you can see the LAB values are actually quite close to each other - and no other SMS colour came nearly as close as J-8 (I knew in advance that after one year, the *b value would be lower, - because the Optical Brighteners in the paper have faded a bit - so that's normal...).

So I went into our files and found the original file we used to create the demo colour ticket here above. And guess what; the colour we used to create the sample test ticket was the SMS J-8, - not SMS J-5 and the colour difference (dE00) between my measurement and the LAB value of the sRGB colour was less than 1.8, which is pretty damn good - considering that the colour proof I measured for this experiment has been laying around my office for over a year. If your Printer/Manufacturer can keep your colours below dE00 of 2, they are REALLY good.

My little ColorMeter Exact helped me find this out, - so I can at least say for myself that I am extremely impressed with it and based on my own, slightly bitter, experience, I can safely recommend it for serious professional uses and Quality Control".

UPDATE May 10th 2024:

We have now added the SMS Standard library to the Exact instrument, so there is no longer need to open the SMS colour palette in Photoshop to check the closest SMS colour. You get it instanty by simply selecting the SMS Standard v6 library in your Exact App on your mobile phone.

Here is a screenshot that I just took when measuring the same old proof - now 2-3 year old:

About spectral measurements - Sphere v.s. 45/0 geometry

About M standards (M0, M1, M2, M3) - by Xrite