On Mar 31, 2014, at 12:42 PM, Louis Dina <lou@loudina.com> wrote:
Does anybody have experience and advice on how to proceed?
If you're going to be printing with true metallic inks, you might be able to get a not-miserable match just by getting the closest Lab match you can. The difference in specular reflections will still be there, but they might be acceptable. If you're going to use regular inks or en electronic device for the final presentation, no single solid patch of color is going to be adequate. Rather, you're going to need to photograph the metal using techniques similar to those that you'd use in photographing coinage. Essentially, you don't photograph the metal, but rather the reflections, especially of the light source(s). Particularly helpful is what's sometimes called, "black magic," portions of the subject that, due to the geometry of the lighting, reflect almost no light back to the camera and appear nearly black. Nearly- or even fully-blown-out specular highlights might be desirable as well. Depending on the shape of the object, there might only be a very little bit that's actually the color reported by the spectrophotometer. You could simulate that type of effect in Photoshop, of course, but it'd be a lot easier for me personally to photograph it than to do it digitally. That'd especially be the case if you needed the highlights and shadows to be accurate as well. Another option to suggest to the client is that they might to want to just make sample books with the actual materials themselves. It'd be the only unambiguous option, and may well lie within the budget -- especially if the requirements are particularly stringent or critical. Cheers, b&