The San Jose Mercury News published a tidbit explaining yet another of the iPhone myriad capabilities (can you blame them since the headquarters of Apple, Inc. is located in the heart of its service area?).
Think those peonies in your neighbor’s yard are the perfect color for your bedroom walls? As the iPhone commercials would say, there’s an app for that. At least two, in fact. Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams have both introduced free iPhone applications that let you shoot a photo and then match a color in the picture to a paint hue. Both also suggest coordinating colors and can even guide the user to the nearest retailer.
Pretty cool. I don’t have an iPhone, though, so I guess I’ll have to pick paint the old-fashioned way — old-fashioned meaning with online tools paint companies have on their websites to help you find coordinating colors and visualize your space.
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Time to buy an iPhone for yourself and your husband, it sounds like!
No way that works. The iPhone has automatic white balance where it looks at the range of colors in the frame and guesses what pure white is and remaps the colors the sensor sees relative to it’s guess. Also, the auto exposure adjustment will change the saturation/brightness. Also, if you take the picture of the color outside, it’s illuminated with D50/65 reference light and inside your flourescent/incandescent lights will change it’s color.
Best technique I’ve found is to guess, paint a wall or 2, wait to dry and buy another can (or have them retint). You can also buy little tint tubes yourself and blend them into your paint. I’ve painted every room at least twice. Experience will quickly guide you on staying away from dangerous color ideas.
I imagine it’s about as accurate as viewing paint colors on your computer. You’re right, your best bet is to try some out in the area you’ll be painting, but be sure to give it some time so you can view it in different lights throughout the day, which will make the color appear different. I’m impatient, so I usually trust the paint chips, but that’s not 100% accurate due to the light issue and also because the colors on the chips are ink, rather than pigment. I guess I live on the edge.