Colour management for the globalised textile & clothing industry

The globalized textile industries retailing in North America, Europe, Africa, and Japan source most of their products in China and Hong Kong, and color management is one of the most important quality aspects. Visual color assessment, which is a direct assessment of colors, is the most widely used color assessment method and in many cases, the final decisions on color matching are based on this method. The differences among visual assessors and within assessors, and between viewing cabinets and light sources can influence visual assessment. Instrumental color quality evaluation can improve the performance of assessment in terms of good repeatability, inter-instrumental agreement in cases of using close tolerance instruments, and better accuracy for seeing small color differences than average human observers. Instrumental color quality evaluation uses a color measurement device, where, in most cases, a reflectance spectrophotometer is involved. Communication of colors by electronic means is a significant method to achieve rapid communication, for which an Internet-based color system for the textile and garment industry has been developed.