Color: it’s #$%* relative

Have you ever tried to match a color between two or more distinct media? My guess is you settled for close enough. That’s the trouble with color matching. It’s way more complicated than you imagine. Stick with me through this technical crap for a very interesting eye/brain disconnect. Your brain literally won’t believe your eyes.

The question posed: A client is choosing colors for her business. I’m currently designing a business card for her based on the paint colors she will use for her studio. I got the paint swatch for a green, and I’m trying to find a similar CMYK color in my Pantone “Solid to Process Guide Coated” swatch book. It’s been difficult, and so I was wondering if that’s the way to go or if there’s another technique out there.

As with most things, there’s a short answer and a long answer. The short answer: color swatches will get you close enough. Pantone’s Solid-to-Process guide (now called Color Bridge) will give you the closest CMYK to a given Pantone solid. But that represents a small fraction of the millions of possible CMYK mixes. Rogondino’s Process Color Manual will give you 24,000 printed CMYK swatches, which will get you in the ballpark, but it’s still relatively few.

But here’s the thing to know: You don’t need a perfect match. Even if you could roll her wall paint right onto her business card, they wouldn’t look the same. Confused? There are several reasons why even an exact color match won’t… well, match.

One, we perceive large areas of color (the wall) differently from small areas (the card). Two, light falls unevenly. Look around your room and you’ll see direct light here, indirect there, and different intensities and colors (incandescent, fluorescent, daylight). Three, nearby colors affect perception; green next to blue looks yellower than green next to yellow. Also, colors get flavored by colored light reflected from floors, ceiling, and so on. The lighter the color, the more it will be flavored by other colors. And, of course, green on your printed material (reflected light) looks much different from green on your computer screen (projected light).

Color theory is a bitch. The most important problem has been a confusion between the behavior of light mixtures, called additive color, and the behavior of paint or ink or dye or pigment mixtures, called subtractive color. This problem arises because the absorption of light by material substances follows different rules from the perception of light by the eye. Most color effects are due to contrasts on three relative attributes that define all colors:

lightness (light vs. dark, or white vs. black),
saturation (intense vs. dull), and
hue (e.g., red, orange, yellow, green, blue or purple).

Your goal is to get the perceived color as close as you can. Green next to black, for example, must be darker than green next to white in order to look the same. Green in a dark hall should be lighter than green in a light room, in order to look the same. And so on. Now we’re getting into the long answer.

The fact that green is the most diverse color in nature works in your favor. There are more variations of green, by far, than of any other color, so you have a big palette to work with.

(Above) Which circle is darker, A or B? You fuss getting your two greens just so, then a shadow crosses the wall. What happens? Our minds compensate for the shifting light. Our eyes see one thing and the brain another. Result: Circle B still appears lighter than circle A. Your swatch book, however, will tell you that color B is both darker and grayer (below). Yes, the B circle and the B swatch are identical, but your brain will not believe that, which is the point here. No really, they are the same color.

The takeaway: Get your colors as close as you can, but don’t sweat perfection. Close enough really is good enough. Part of the problem here is that the client is the one often asking for the perfect match, and they neither get nor care about reflected vs. projected light or differences in perception. They want exact, because that’s what is in their heads to demand and expect from a modern designer. Give them exactish. If they complain, use the mind fuck example above.

Final note. If you’re working with a swatch — like a Pantone color — stick with it, because it gives you a standard starting point. Just don’t expect someone viewing it at the mall to see the same color as another viewing it online or outdoors or in a dim restaurant. They will all see something different.

Adapted from Before & After: Design Talk discussion.

Posted by Andrew
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