Method and system for a roboust color matching and adjustment process of effect colors

A system for providing a match metric for matching and adjusting color of at least one sample coating to a target coating, the system comprising:

• a computing device comprising one or more processors;
• a color measuring device;
• a formulation database comprising formulas for coating compositions and interrelated colorimetric data;
• at least one communications interface;
• an output device;
• and
• a computer program product, the computer program product comprises computer executable codes stored on a computer readable storage medium functionally coupled to the computing device and causes the one or more processors to perform a computing process when in operation, the computing process comprises the steps of:
• obtaining, via the at least one communications interface using the color measuring device, colorimetric data of the target coating and colorimetric data of the sample coating, wherein the colorimetric data of the target coating comprise spectral curve(s) of the target coating measured at one or more measure geometries, and the colorimetric data of the sample coating comprise spectral curve(s) of the sample coating determined at the one or more measure geometries, wherein at least one of the one or more measure geometries is a gloss geometry;
• normalizing each of the spectral curves of the target coating measured at the respective one of the one or more measure geometries and the spectral curves of the sample coating determined at the respective one of the one or more measure geometries by using a scaling function stored in the formulation database;
• producing, at least for the at least one gloss geometry of the one or more measure geometries and for a number of wavelength values, normalized first derivative values of the respective normalized spectral curve of the target coating measured at the respective one of the one or more measure geometries and normalized first derivative values of the respective normalized spectral curve of the sample coating determined at the respective one of the one or more measure geometries;
• producing, at least for the at least one gloss geometry of the one or more measure geometries and for each wavelength value of the number of wavelength values, difference values between the normalized first derivative values of the respective normalized spectral curve of the target coating and the normalized first derivative values of the respective normalized spectral curve of the sample coating;
• producing a first match metric for the target coating and the sample coating based at least on the difference values produced for the at least one gloss geometry, wherein the first match metric accounts for variations of effect pigment orientation in the target coating and the sample coating;
• and
• producing the match metric based on the first match metric and outputting, via the output device, the produced match metric for a user via the output device.