from Hacker News

Show HN: Paint Color Matching App (Sherwin, Behr, PPG)

by jhiggins777 on 3/5/20, 10:11 PM with 34 comments

  • by crazygringo on 3/5/20, 11:06 PM

    I'm curious... if the RGB values are all accurate, is there a standard color and exposure calibration for paint swatches that is shared across brands?

    The white point (color temperature) is easy, using whatever light source they're being illuminated with.

    But what determines whether a particular white is (240, 240, 240) or (250, 250, 250) or (255, 255, 255)? The exposure seems far more arbitrary. Is there some kind of maximally bright matte "reference white" material photographed next to each swatch, that then gets calibrated to (255, 255, 255) or similar?

    If so, it would be pretty cool if you could buy a reference white chip like that, hold it up to a painted wall in your house, and have an app that could take a photo with both and output the "true" current paint color.

  • by pkaye on 3/6/20, 12:08 AM

    I got one of those Color Muse color matching devices and this matching gets hard when you have glossy or rough surfaces. I've been trying to get some touchup paint to cover a stucco patch and despite many attempts, never can match it close. The colors look different at various angles.

  • by rafamvc on 3/5/20, 10:55 PM

    This doesn't have all Sherwin Williams colors. And the dropdown stops at the letter B and after.

  • by ghostbrainalpha on 3/5/20, 10:56 PM

    What I want the ability to upload a picture of a paint chip, AND tell you how long it has been since that wall was painted.

    That way the app could adjust for fading and tell me what color that paint was originally.

  • by mjgoeke on 3/6/20, 12:34 AM

    Something is off. The matched colors show an RGB with each, but it's the same value when the color is obviously different. I took a screenshot of it and pulled it up in an image editor to make sure.

    e.g. https://www.matchmypaintcolor.com/ppg/medieval-forest shows RGB 1,116,120 for all 3 swatches, but only the Maxi Teal is that RGB, the other tiles have other RGB values.

  • by gitgud on 3/7/20, 2:39 PM

    This looks exactly like one of those "Buy this domain" place holder sites.

    Compare the pair:

    - https://www.matchmypaintcolor.com/ (this site)

    - http://surfweb.com/ (fake site)

  • by jamesrom on 3/6/20, 1:57 AM

    How do you calculate the distance between these colors? RGB distance will be close enough, probably, but for matching paint/ink in the real world, it's important to consider visual (sensation) difference.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference

  • by rkho on 3/5/20, 10:52 PM

    Oh this is fun. I recently paid $4.99 to unlock similar functionality with a different webapp, though that one also supported Kelly Moore and others.

    Any intentions on adding suggested palettes?

  • by lttlrck on 3/6/20, 12:33 AM

    I would love to be able to match by RGB.

    Edit: actually it’s almost possible to do what I need. It’s just be much easier if it was possible to find closest match. Still this could be helpful.

  • by bradknowles on 3/6/20, 4:20 AM

    I have a Pantone CapSure color sampling/matching device, which includes a wide variety of color samples from various manufacturers.

    Any idea how this process compares?

  • by swframe2 on 3/6/20, 1:54 AM

    I'm curious. What is the algorithm to determine how to mix paints to match a color?

  • by kube-system on 3/6/20, 4:50 AM

    I need this but for automotive paints

  • by markdown on 3/6/20, 2:30 AM

    > PPG, Behr, & Sherwin Williams

    What are these? The website doesn't seem to explain anywhere.