Feature Spotlight: Improve First-Shot Match Rates with SmartMatch

As a color lab scientist, you spend your entire day performing product tests, color matching, and palette analysis. Many of these tasks are done manually, taking up valuable time and resources. Often the formulations are not within tolerance, resulting in multiple corrections.

There is a solution to this. It’s called SmartMatch – a feature in Match Pigment software that learns and adapts as more formulas are approved – with the end goal of improving your first shot match rates. That means reducing or even eliminating the need for corrections, saving you time and money.

What is SmartMatch?

SmartMatch is a  feature designed by Datacolor scientists and engineers. It accounts for the difference between theory and practice by turning the behavior of pigments into actual formulations.

We know. That’s a very scientific description. Here’s what it means if you’re not a color scientist:

Traditional formulation software does basic search and correct tasks. It finds the closest color formula in the database and does a correction based on the way the combination of colorants behave in that formula. Then, it presents the formula’s initial weigh up to the user. Although this improves the chances of getting a good color match, it’s limited to only the closest formulas.

But SmartMatch considers a range of formulas with the correct combination of colors, increasing the accuracy of the first prediction. As a result, you get a more accurate formula faster.

Why is SmartMatch important?

Paint manufacturers sent verified electronic formulas for each palette color and each product to their retail paint stores.  Since the formulas can be different for different glosses and products, the amount of formulas that need to be wet matched can be in the tens of thousands. This translates to hundreds of hours wet matching palette formulas. With SmartMatch software, only a percentage of these formulas need to be matched to assure first-shot matching on the total palette. That greatly reduces the effort needed to provide verified formulas.

Here are some real cost-savings results from Datcolor customers:

Saving resources and measuring and matching more colors per week with SmartMatch also means you can introduce new products to the market faster.

If you want to reduce physical wet matching for palette formula distribution, and save time and money, contact Datacolor to see how SmartMatch can be the smart choice your business needs.