In order for a specified colour to be fully realised, exact colour standards for everyone involved is essential. That’s what our customers ask for and that’s why NCS Colour Management works tirelessly – to make sure NCS remains the most accurate and consistent colour system tools in the world.
Thanks to the stringent standards set by NCS Colour Management, NCS has become the most used colour systems in the world for industry and design; the importance of getting the colour right being central to all markets.
Architects, designers, marketeers… invest heavily and work hard to find the right colours for projects, products, marketing or colour offerings. Creating beautiful architecture, successful, market-leading products, giving their products the best visibility in a crowded marketplace or simply securing long-lasting client bases; it’s all a matter of customer confidence and trust.
In terms of colour there should not be even the smallest colour weakness in the chain between laboratory recipes, production, marketing, sales... At least not if you want to realise the colours you have chosen to their full potential. This is why NCS has the most professional and accurate colour solutions for all levels in this chain.
Our colour vision is extremely sensitive on colour differences between two or more objects or materials. We can, after all, distinguish 10 million colours. Seeing single colours as stand alones, we cannot distinguish more than about ten thousand. Consequently colour accuracy is fundamental when there are larger coloured areas or colours are seen together.
In some industries, such as print and textiles we have become used to lower colour accuracy depending on production difficulties and fading colour cards. Most printed matter has a short lifespan. But in other industries such as automotive, products with different parts being put together, no one would accept variation between the different parts. In architecture, the coloured surfaces are big - often with different materials working together, which the sensitive eye sees immediately.
This is where NCS comes in, based on how a colour looks, it may be used in any industry. Our global quality-conscious customers and industries have driven us to position NCS as a global quality leader. Today we are in a situation wherein increasing numbers of diverse users and markets have started to use NCS - as they realise how unbeatable accuracy can improve the way they deliver colour to their customers.
With NCS solutions we give you the intuitive NCS language and accuracy of colour you need to make your visions come to fruition.
NCS QUALITY MANAGEMENT
What use is a colour system if its samples and colour tools bear little resemblance to each other from edition to edition? Indeed, what use is a colour system if its samples and colour products fade and bear no resemblance to the system’s own standards. Or what if a colour system does not have a master standard? This is what NCS solves.
Historically, NCS customers and specifiers have required highest colour accuracy and stability over years to be able to ‘speak the same colour’. With so much invested in developing and manufacturing new products or projects it makes sense to avoid any problems where you can – especially where colour is concerned. Using NCS throughout your development or design process means that you’re not going to have to pay for a re-run as a result of undesirable colour.
The rigorous NCS Quality Management was set up by NCS in cooperation with some of the world’s largest paint manufacturers and based on requirements from specifiers and product manufacturers. These different parties use NCS as a platform and colour library for their entire colour production and market communication.
Each year NCS Quality Centre makes sure that all NCS products and samples are produced with environmental approved pigments and according to the deep-frozen NCS Primary Standard. The outcome of the vigorous NCS testing is published annually.
NCS Quality Management and the NCS colour notation system forms the base for the Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish and South African National Standards. It is also the platform for NCS ISO 9001, No. 17888, Quality Assurance System.
It is thanks to these self-set stringent standards that NCS colour tools are the most accurate in the world. The NCS samples rarely experience any colour shift from each other or the Primary master Standard. Plus, handled correctly, NCS colour samples will not fade for many years unlike most printed samples. This makes the investment into NCS trustworthy for the user and cost saving and profitable for the industry
NCS QUALITY CENTER
The incredibly high standards of NCS Colours are made possible thanks to the work of the NCS Quality Center. One of the main tasks of the NCS Quality Centre is ongoing R&D with the aim of maintaining NCS’ position as the leading colour system and solutions provider while furthering the accuracy, quality and consistency of the Natural Colour System and its products.
THE NCS PRIMARY STANDARD
In order to be able to maintain the quality level and to create accurate NCS or customised swatches, colour samples and matching standards, NCS Quality Centre has a set of original master colour samples from which to act as a measure of comparison for all other products. The originals from which all others are measured, if you prefer.
This set of well-defined, deep-frozen, unique NCS Primary Standards has been developed and is, together with its spectral readings, kept at NCS Quality Centre. The NCS Primary Standards are checked annually to secure that there are no colour or instrumental drift. These readings form the base for the production and control of any further NCS Calibrated Matching Standards, and for the control of any quality assured production. The NCS Calibrated Matching Standard is checked at date of delivery and guaranteed a tolerance of less than Delta E 0,5 accuracy. It’s intended for colour laboratory to create colour formulas and for the highest quality checking
HOW TO RECOGNISE COLOUR ACCURACY, WHAT IS DELTA E?
Our colour vision is very logical in its make up, our eyes don’t deceive they perceive. The visual appearance, i.e. how the colour looks, is the most important and true way to judge colour especially as we evaluate the entire surface including colour, gloss, texture, size etc. However as colour vary depending on viewing situation, illumination, texture and personal preferences etc there is a need for standardised “objective” means of measurement.
As an aid to industry and at laboratory level, colour-measured values received from a spectrophotometer are used to measure radiation and physically define the colour. This is calculated according CIE. The values are sometimes used to match and create the pigment formula. The CIE values taken from identically calibrated instruments are very precise but do not inform about how the colour looks like.
The ‘E’ in Delta E stems from Empfindung, German for feeling or sensation. The Delta is like the one used in mathematic circles to indicate a change in a variable.
The instrumental values may be calculated with different equations of which the CMC(1:1) has been the optimal and most effective formula for some years and which NCS uses. The main unit for calculating colour differences between two colours (which should match) is Delta Lab. It is the difference for each of three dimensions in the measurement colour space. Most commonly used is Delta E (∆E), which is a mathematical summary of the three values L,a,b and supposed to indicate the composite picture of the total colour difference. Ideally, the ∆E is a perceptual indication of the size of the visual colour difference between two colours. It is the best means of technical assessment known today.
The values received is on a scale which starts at 0, where ∆E(CMC 1:1) = 0 stands for no perceived difference at all. At approximately ∆E 0,2 - 0,3, the difference starts to be visible. Often a Delta E 1 has been regarded as a commercial match. However this depends on the industry. In many cases ∆E 0,3 is the requirement for when different parts are put together and in some industries such as print, printers and screens a ∆E of 3-20 is common. For paint matching purposes a Delta E of 0,5 is the common value. Typically a Delta E of 1 for two colours is clearly irritating put together but, with a small border line between colours, the difference may disappear visually
However Delta E of 1 to 6 is a terrible level of tolerance for industry colour use. Two samples of the same colour should match! That’s what our customers ask for and it’s the objective of NCS colour standards.
DELTA-E VISUAL TOLERANCES
Thanks to the NCS Quality Management and the use of high-quality lacquers and environmentally approved, stable pigments, tolerances are steadily being reduced and kept extremely low.
Ignorance about colour, lack of better solutions, and inferior colour sample collections, all combine to turn the choice and control of colour into a costly venture.
Being far from consistent, samples from other systems, such as CMYK, RGB or printed colour collections, vary a great deal from one print to the next. This is largely due to the fact that they are not based around a standard from which to refer back to for comparison. This is also why suppliers recommend the colour tools be renewed every year. As a result, the loss in marketing value and the cost for production errors and customer claims are enormous.
In most printed sample collections only 20 % attain ∆E(CMC 1:1) = 2, the remaining 80 % is even worse, ∆E 2-20.
NCS has diminished the unacceptable colour variations of the past, reaching almost zero, ∆E 0,3.
NCS MEANS SUPERIOR QUALITY & ACCURACY
The astonishingly consistent results indicate that NCS Colour Samples, swatches and products are of a far superior accuracy than any other offered by any company in the world.
They bear not only an unbeatable level of accuracy to the NCS Primary Standard colours but also, as a result, to the notation to which they illustrate. Plus, this also means that each notation’s colour sample is identical to any other colour sample of the same notation.
After more than 60 years of experience with individuals and companies working with colour it is clear that quality is one of the key factors in saving costs and making work easier for everyone. A colour user should not have to comprise on quality not worry about whether the colour you want will be the colour you actually get during production.
Using NCS at each stage of the colour communication process will mean that colour shifting, wasted money and wasted time are things of the past.
THE ACCURACY OF NCS SAMPLES & SERVICES
NCS production figures show that even the lowest level of NCS - Natural Colour System®© products (NCS Quality Level 2) have accuracy levels unmatched by any other colour system. 99.8% have a maximum of 0.6 ∆E(CMC 1:1) 77.2% having less than 0.3 ∆E.
All productions of NCS colour cards or customised standards are rigorously checked by the NCS Quality Centre and the target is a tolerance of below 0.3 ∆E at the matching stage.
There are three levels of quality at NCS which meet the various requirements of the colour industry. Calibrated Matching Standards, NCS Quality Level 1 and NCS Quality Level 2. However, whichever level you choose you can be sure that you are using the most accurate colour standards in design, manufacturing and marketing. Our tests prove that nothing else comes close in terms of quality and accuracy. Colour is such an important resource in the creative industries why would you want to compromise?
NCS QUALITY CONTROL PROCESS
The NCS colour sample is at the centre of accurate and effective colour communication.
On behalf of our customers we invest a vast amount of time and resources into the production and control of NCS colour samples for design and for our large volume customers. Based on the NCS primary standard and its measurement values as the base for production, we are granted a stable platform to create the most accurate NCS colour tools benefiting you business.
The pigment formulation (the mixing) is checked in a production simulated process to avoid any slight changes in the drying process. The coated product is checked on samples from the start, middle and end of each production run. The final production itself is checked by sampling.
To some it seems like a labour intensive process to create a small colour sample, often no bigger than a square inch. The resources exist to give our customers the best possible quality in colour tools, one that will not fade over time and will remain true to its colour values and we shall continue to do just that. In times when the computer is used much more for design and communication, the physical accurate NCS colour standards makes this possible and are even of more importance.