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The color of crackers can indicate issues that influence flavor and impact consumer perception of products. Measurement offers a standardized method for determining and comparing color and spectral data to improve quality and minimize waste.

Understanding Color Measurement

Color measurement is an objective process that translates color into numerical data. Quantifying color data enables cracker producers to maintain product consistency and quality. 

Cracker manufacturers have a unique need for objective data because numerous factors influence customer perception, including:

• Irregular shapes
• Ingredients
• Baking processes
• Textured surfaces
• Multicolored flavorings or seasonings

Before someone tastes candy, they see its color and make assumptions about its flavor, freshness, and quality. Color matters in sweets because they come in vibrant hues, and consumers tend to reach for the product that most matches their ideal of a desirable color. Color can also indicate issues in product development or processing steps, making it an effective indicator of quality control. Additionally, measuring color enables consistency across batches. All underscore the importance of knowing how to quantify it accurately.

1. Size and Shape

Size, shape, and texture vary among candies and can create a measurement challenge. Advanced color and spectral data measurement tools account for these variances. Calibration allows for more accurate color measurement across differences while reducing errors. 

2. Color Variations

One piece of candy may contain multiple colors, and some sweets have a different surface color than the interior. A color measurement device must be able to quantify these spectral variations across the color of every layer and swirl.

Pet owners want the best for their companion animals to help them live long, happy, and healthy lives. As the nutritional basis these animals need, pet food is instrumental to that goal. Standardizing color measurement helps pet food manufacturers ensure their products consistently fall within allowable tolerances to support the creation of high-quality ingredients, treats, and foods that are safe for pets.

An Overview of Color Standards for Pet Food

Modern pet food manufacturing often introduces color additives to make the products more visually appealing to pet owners, who correlate color with quality and nutrition. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) governs and enforces certification and color standards for additives, and costly penalties can apply for noncompliance.

The Association of American Feed Control Officers (AAFCO) also sets industry color standards for pet food safety and quality. The nonprofit works closely with both federal and state regulators to design legislation, review ingredients, establish grading requirements, and more. AAFCO also issues its own certifications for color additives, including AAFCO-natural and AAFCO-compliant.

The Grey Change scale can help detect the amount of fading that occurs in different textiles after they’re washed. Image Source: Max Pixel

A homeowner decided to wash a set of red living room curtains for the very first time, carefully following the cleaning instructions listed on the label. He avoided bleach products and washed the curtains on the delicate cycle setting. But despite his diligence, the color nonetheless faded significantly after washing; his once-red curtains were now a shade of faded pink, and they no longer matched the color scheme of the living room.

This is a common challenge that textile manufacturers face, whether they’re dyeing textiles for curtains, blankets, clothing or any other colorful fabric. If a large-scale textile manufacturer fails to identify problems with fading or color bleeding in its products early on, it could lead to customer dissatisfaction later. Yet there is a solution to this problem. Using the Grey Change and Grey Stain color scales, which are included in the software packaged with some advanced spectrophotometers, textile manufacturers can identify both fading and bleeding early on in the dyeing process. These two color scales are specifically designed to analyze color fastness and dye durability, allowing manufacturers to refine their dyeing processes and invest in the most durable dyes for their products.

The Problem with Some Colorful Textile Dyes

Certain textile dyes are more prone to fading and bleeding than others and environmental factors like exposure to UV rays or frequent washing can significantly alter product color depending on the chemical makeup of the dye.1 This is why textile manufacturers must consider the color fastness of the dye being used for each product, as different types of dyes will have different benefits and downsides.

The term “color fastness” refers to a dye’s durability against fading and bleeding; a dye that has excellent color fastness will be durable and long-lasting, even when exposed to environmental factors that cause color fading or bleeding. A dye with poor color fastness won’t be as durable. For instance, one type of dye that is known for its excellent color fastness is an azoic or naphthol dye.2 These dyes produce bright, bold colors, especially in the red and orange spectrum, and are highly resistant to fading in the wash or even when exposed to bleach. Conversely, acidic dyes tend to be resistant to color fading when they’re exposed to sunlight, but they’re much more prone to fading and bleeding after washing. Here are a few more examples of common textile dyes and their typical color fastness:

• Basic: Excellent light and wash fastness.
• Disperse: Good light and wash fastness, but sensitive to nitrogen gas.
• Direct: Fair lightfastness, but very poor wash fastness.
• Reactive: Great light and wash fastness, but prone to bleeding excess dye unless it’s washed well during manufacturing.
• Mordant: Good light and wash fastness, but only available in a small range of colors.
• Premetallized: Good light and wash fastness, but only available in a small range of colors.
• Sulphur: Fair light and wash fastness.
• Vat: Excellent color and wash fastness. It’s perhaps the most durable textile dye used by manufacturers.
• Fluorescent brighteners: Fair wash fastness, but very poor lightfastness.

While this basic list of color fastness can give you a general idea of which textile dyes will be the best choice for your textile products, the list isn’t foolproof. For example, although sulphur dye is generally fairly resistant against color fading after being washed or exposed to sunlight, some manufacturers have found that certain sulphur-dyed yarns will occasionally fade after about six months of use. This is why it’s important to test your dyes for true color fastness using the Grey Change and Grey Stain scales; every dye reacts differently with each fabric you use, so by testing each new product in advance, you may produce more durable, colorful textiles.

Textile dyes vary in color fastness depending on the chemical makeup of the dye or the type of fabric that a manufacturer uses. Image Source: Shutterstock user Pichit Tongma

Biomedical optics offer non-invasive alternatives to many healthcare procedures through the use of spectrophotometric technology. Image Source: Flickr user frankieleon

Biomedical optics very well may be the future of our health care industry. Whether you are an athlete, patient, or parent of an infant, biomedical optics will most likely play a significant role in your health care or that of someone you love in the near future. Biomedical optics utilize NIR (near-infrared) spectroscopy in a number of ways and provides a safe, non-invasive, and non-destructive method of analysis for a variety of medical needs.

The Ultra-Scan VIS can accurately measure carpet color because it takes texture into account. Image source: Pixabay user Frantisek_Krejci

A hotel chain has hired an interior designer to replace the old carpet design in every guestroom with something that looks more sleek and modern. After sifting through a number of swatches, the designer finds the perfect shade: a simple charcoal grey design that will contrast beautifully against the crisp white comforters and bed sheets that the hotel uses. But in order for the interior designer’s vision to truly come to life, the carpet color needs to be consistent from room to room. Not only does every guest room have to match, the hotel also needs to ensure that the carpeting looks seamless from the entrance of the room to every corner. If the hotel receives rolls of carpeting that vary in color even slightly, it will make every seam more obvious–the hotel will end up with a room that looks more like a patchwork quilt than a chic, modern space (commonly referred to as a “carpet sidematch problem”).1

This is just one of many reasons carpet manufacturers should take accurate color measurements of their products before releasing them on the market. However, it isn’t always easy to measure carpet color, even when you use color measurement tools like spectrophotometers. Because carpeting is soft, uneven and not always entirely opaque, analyzing the color of your samples can be frustratingly complicated. An instrument such as the UltraScan VIS, however, simplifies this process by allowing for optimal measurement methodology and the highest degree of color measurement precision. Unlike many other spectrophotometers on the market, the UltraScan VIS instrument is specifically designed to measure carpeting (among many other sample types), and makes the color quality control process fast, simple and extremely accurate.  

The Challenges of Analyzing Carpet Color

Carpet swatches seem easy to analyze at first glance, especially when designs feature just one solid color. However, carpeting is never truly “solid” in color, even if it appears so to the naked eye. If you look carefully at any carpet swatch, you’ll see that the tiny particles that make up the sample frequently vary in opacity, shape, and color. These three factors pose a number of challenges for manufacturers.   

Challenge #1: Opacity

Opacity is one of the first challenges you’ll come across when you try to measure the color of your sample using a spectrophotometer. Many carpet products are slightly translucent, and this becomes more obvious when you change the backing of your sample. For instance, your slightly translucent carpet sample will look lighter when backed by a light-colored background, but that same sample will appear much darker when backed by a dark-colored background. In order to get an accurate measurement, you have to standardize your sample backing.

Challenge #2: Shape

Carpeting isn’t flat. Rather, the material is flexible, and the tiny threads that make up the sample can shift with even the slightest pressure. The non-homogenous nature of carpeting makes it difficult to measure color unless you use tools specifically designed to handle textured samples. When a color measurement instrument presses into a carpet swatch, it creates a pillowing effect. The tiny carpet particles bend around the instrument’s measurement port, and this in turn can cast shadows that alter the overall color reading. To fix this, you need to take several readings in succession, then average those readings to get an accurate measurement.

Challenge #3: Color

Finally, the color of your sample or the type of dye that you use can cause a few unexpected problems for color measurement instruments. The most common problem that you may come across is the use of fluorescent dye in carpeting. This dye makes the product appear brighter and whiter than it is, and it is frequently used in white carpeting.2 Although this dye makes your products look whiter and potentially more appealing, it also makes your samples more sensitive to UV light. When your sample is exposed to the UV that naturally occurs in your light source, it can alter the overall measurement result, making your product appear lighter. This is why you need to cancel out the impact of UV on your sample or take UV into account when you measure your product’s color.

Pile heights and texture can significantly affect the appearance of your carpet samples. Image Source: Unsplash user Dane Deaner

The current AOCS Automated method of assessing the color of refined fats and oils requires that the oils are visually free of turbidity (particulates and moisture), because the clarity of the oil affects the color result. They require the user to do a visual assessment prior to doing an automatic filter selection determination.

Turbidimeters are instruments that can objectively determine clarity of oils and Spectrophotometers can provide objective color results using cell pathlengths of 10mm to 20mm that correlate with current 5.25in cells.

Advances in instrument design such as the Vista enable a user to prepare a single sample and record both Turbidity and Color from a single measurement. These instruments remove the subjectivity inherent in human eyesight from the inspection process resulting in more complete and more consistent reporting year after year.

Watch HunterLab Poster Presentation at 2023 AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo: