Appearance

The challenge of measuring visual appearance

Visual appearance is closely linked to our perception of quality. For various industries it is important to characterize the visual properties of their products such as watches, cosmetics or building materials and to control them during production. However, measuring appearance – in particular color, gloss, texture and light transmission - is challenging.

With the emergence of novel materials, the task becomes even more complex. Goniochromatic materials change colour depending on illuminating and/or viewing direction. They can also have very different degrees of gloss or sparkle. These materials must therefore be measured under different viewing and illumination conditions and with spatial resolution.

To meet the challenge of appearance measurement, METAS has developed three measurement setups which allow spatially resolved measurements of small objects (smaller than 1 mm). Two of them, called µBRDF and MARS, measure the reflection under directional illumination and observation. The third setup measures the diffuse reflection, where only the observation is directional, while the illumination is diffuse.

The specialization on small objects meets the particular needs of the Swiss industry, but is available to our customers worldwide.

Last modification 12.08.2020

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