Color Matching for Metallic Coatings

Metallic coatings change in appearance as the viewing and illumination direction change. Matching of such finishes requires a match of color as viewed under different lighting and viewing conditions, as well as texture, i.e. matching the spatial distribution of color. The system described in this paper provides a purely objective and automatic match measure for evaluating the goodness of a color match. A new texture camera has been utilized in this work to capture multiview images of the coating to be analyzed under different illumination angles. These multiview images are used to characterize the color travel of a coating as well as analyze the appearance attributes of the finish such as orange peel, sparkle, and texture of the flakes within the coating.