Method and device for identification of effect pigments in a target coating

A device comprising:

• a database, which comprises formulas for coating compositions and interrelated color values, interrelated texture values, and interrelated digital images,
• at least one processor, which is in communicative connection with at least one measuring device, the database, at least one filtering technique, and a convolutional neural network, and programmed to execute at least the following steps:
• receiving, from the measuring device, color values, texture values and digital images of a target coating,
• retrieving from the database one or more preliminary matching formulas based on the color values and/or the texture values obtained for the target coating,
• performing, by using the filtering technique, for each of the obtained images of the target coating and the images interrelated with the one or more preliminary matching formulas, an image analysis to determine at least one sparkle point within the respective images,
• creating subimages of each sparkle point from the received images and from the images interrelated with the one or more preliminary matching formulas,
• providing the created subimages to the convolutional neural network, the convolutional neural network being trained to correlate a respective subimage of a respective sparkle point with a pigment and/or a pigment class, and to identify the pigment and/or the pigment class based on the respective subimage of the respective sparkle point,
• determining and outputting, for the target coating and for each preliminary matching formula, a statistic of the identified pigments and/or pigment classes, respectively, wherein the statistic determined for the target coating and the statistics determined for the one or more preliminary matching formulas can each be presented as a respective histogram and/or as a respective vector,
• comparing the statistic determined for the target coating with the statistics determined for the one or more preliminary matching formulas, and
• determining at least one of the one or more preliminary matching formulas as the formula(s) best matching with the target coating.

A non-transitory computer readable medium with a computer program with program codes that are configured, when the computer program is loaded and executed by at least one processor, which is in a communicative connection with at least one measuring device, a database, a filtering technique and a convolutional neural network, to execute at least the following steps:

• receiving, from the measuring device, color values, texture values and digital images of a target coating,
• retrieving from the database which comprises formulas for coating compositions and interrelated color values, interrelated texture values, and interrelated digital images, one or more preliminary matching formulas based on the color values and/or the texture values obtained for the target coating,
• performing, by using the filtering technique, for each of the obtained images of the target coating and the images interrelated with the one or more preliminary matching formulas, an image analysis to determine at least one sparkle point within the respective images,
• creating subimages of each sparkle point from the received images and from the images interrelated with the one or more preliminary matching formulas,
• providing the created subimages to the convolutional neural network, the convolutional neural network being trained to correlate a respective subimage of a respective sparkle point with a pigment and/or a pigment class and to identify the pigment and/or the pigment class based on the respective subimage of the respective sparkle point,
• determining and outputting, for the target coating and for each preliminary matching formula, a statistic of the identified pigments and/or pigment classes, respectively, wherein the statistic determined for the target coating and the statistics determined for the one or more preliminary matching formulas can each be presented as a respective histogram and/or as a respective vector,
• comparing the statistic determined for the target coating with the statistics determined for the one or more preliminary matching formulas, and
• determining at least one of the one or more preliminary matching formulas as the formula(s) best matching with the target coating.