Statistical Study of Color-Measurement Instrumentation

In a statistical study of the variability of instrumental color-measurement data, two instruments (a Kollmorgen KCS-40 colorimeter-abridged spectrophotometer and a General Electric Recording Spectrophotometer equipped with a Davidson and Hemmendinger digital tristimulus integrator) provided three modes of measurement. Ten samples were measured 48 times in each mode. Frequency distributions were constructed for several colorimetric quantities, including tristimulus values, chromaticity coordinates, and color differences from the mean. To allow study of the error involved in the measurement of color-difference pairs, three such pairs were included in the ten samples. The beneficial effects of averaging were quantified.