The smell of grey balance

gordo

Well-known member
Add another presswork color variable - it turns out that the perception of grey balance is affected by smell.

In a study, participants sat in front of a screen filled with a random color, whilst an ultrasonic diffuser pumped one of six odors into the room – caramel, cherry, coffee, lemon, peppermint, or water as a control – for five minutes. Using two sliders, participants were then asked to manually adjust the color on a screen to what they perceived to be true neutral gray.

The study found that people had a weak but significant tendency to shift the color too far away from neutral gray, in different but predictable ways depending on the scent – except for peppermint. The smell of coffee made participants perceive gray as a more red-brown color, whilst caramel led to more of a yellow-brown. To be expected given their respective dullness, odorless water corresponded to true neutral gray.

Since a mist of water odor corresponded to true neutral gray it's probably prudent to spray water on your press operators a few times during the printing of a job. I'm sure they will appreciate the help with getting the color right.

You can read about the the actual scientific study here:
 
Bad Grey! Bad (Dog)Pressman! - spray with water

Well we can't smack them with rolled up newspaper anymore. nobody has them.
 
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Color.jpg


Cripes I'm old :p
 
How much more black, tho?.......
 

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