X-Rite Color Blog

The Future of Color Consistency: LED Lighting Solutions for Industry Standards For years, fluorescent bulbs have been a mainstay in industries requiring accurate color assessment, but their downsides are becoming increasingly hard to ignore. These lights require warm-up time and may distort color accuracy, both of which lead to production delays and translate into higher sample costs. More importantly, fluorescent bulbs contain hazardous materials like mercury, complicating their disposal. Thi...

Brands may not have a line item in their budget for color, but it can impact the bottom line in different ways. Understanding the true cost of color can help accelerate go-to-market, reduce waste, and save thousands. Color plays a big role in purchase decisions when you consider it only takes shoppers 2 to 7 seconds to select an item from the shelf. To stand out, brands must introduce interesting designs to launch new varieties and seasonal specials, while considering the impact new packaging wi...

Originally published May 3, 2024 from https://canmaker.com/light-touch/ Industry stakeholders came together to explore ink and proofing standards for two-piece beverage cans. Nisa Ali reports from Manchester Leading companies across canmaking industry supply chains are considering general guidance for PantoneLIVE colours in the production of two-piece beverage cans. Following a series of seminars discussing the role of PantoneLIVE colour libraries in the design, proofing and printing process ...

Brands invest a great deal of time and resources when selecting a new color to represent their products. If the color doesn't match expectations after printing, runs are wasted, and everyone is left wondering where the color went wrong. Here's a typical scenario. A brand selects a season color for product packaging and communicates that color to the designer. The designer integrates the color into the design and hands it off to the premedia team to convert it into print-ready files. The files a...

Originally published May 3, 2024 from https://canmaker.com/light-touch/ Industry stakeholders came together to explore ink and proofing standards for two-piece beverage cans. Nisa Ali reports from Manchester Leading companies across canmaking industry supply chains are considering general guidance for PantoneLIVE colours in the production of two-piece beverage cans. Following a series of seminars discussing the role of PantoneLIVE colour libraries in the design, proofing and printing process ...

A recent amendment to the EU Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment will remove the current exemption for mercury to be used in a number of types of fluorescent lamps for special purposes by 24th of February 2025. These bulbs are defined under clause 2(b)(4)-I of the EU REACH directive. After the expiration date, the sale of new equipment including fluorescent technology under this exemption will not be allowed in Europe. Th...

The internet is full of Top 10 Countdowns. We enjoy looking back at our most popular blogs and learning resources to better understand what interests you – our readers. We’ve been publishing our top-read learning resources since 2016, and we’re happy to see some educational topics like color perception, tolerancing, and spectrophotometers continue to rank year after year. Here’s a list of the topics our readers enjoyed most in 2023. Have you read them all? Top 5 X-Ri...

The environmental footprint of fashion is out of control. According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), “Textile mills generate one-fifth of the world's industrial water pollution and use 20,000 chemicals, many of them carcinogenic, to make clothes.” Fabric being dyed in factory. Image from NRDC.org.  A Problem That Impacts Everyone Did you know it takes about 200 tons of water (enough to fill several swimming pools) to produce one ton of cott...

If ensuring color consistency is part of your job description, you’ll want to learn more about PantoneLIVE. Our customers report that it helps them get products to market an average of four times faster! PantoneLIVE is an end-to-end, digital color communication ecosystem that helps everyone involved in a packaging workflow visualize and communicate color. It shows which colors are achievable, and which are not, across everything from flexible packaging to corrugated board. And, since the digital...

When all of final production packaging comes together on the store shelf, it’s a brand’s moment of truth. Do the stand-up pouches, overwraps, and corrugated POP displays match? How close is the color to its standard? We know you spend so much time and money designing, proofing, sampling, printing, and shipping… so where does the color go wrong? Is it an issue with accuracy, consistency, or both? Package designs come together on the shelf. Here you see pouches, labels, cartons, and corrugated wit...