Clariants’ business unit leather are offering their customers a new tool for professional leather colour matching called Match Wizard. During many years, colourists have been using computer colour matching as a daily tool for their colour adjustments and quality control. In cooperation with their customers, Clariant have developed an easy-to-use software especially for the leather industry.
This new software has been used during the past three years in the USA with excellent results and the working process is very simple.
Calibration
Dyes needed for the colour matching are dyed at different concentrations using the customer’s substrate; the leathers are measured by spectrophotometer and introduced into the system. This basic work has to be done only once or the standard set of calibration data available in the software can be used.
Colour matching
The desired shade is measured by spectrophotometer or selected from the Pantone library in the system. Match Wizard proposes a number of dye combinations showing expected colour variations (DE) and metamerism for each recipe. After dyeing the leather with the selected combination of dyes, the first result obtained is already very close to the desired shade.
The measurement of this leather will show the obtained result, which can, if necessary, be further corrected by the software. This can be repeated until the result is accepted (normally 2-3 times).
The main features are:
* Estimation of dye recipes for a shade
* DE and metamerism for each recipe
* The ability to make recipe corrections
* Building of an electronic shade library
* Colour quality control reporting
* Easy export of plots and data to Word/Excel
* On-screen colour with virtual lightbox
* Connection with almost all types of spectrophotometer
* Includes programme for Pantone matching
This software will be released in the 4th quarter 2003.
