Toward the soft metrology of surface gloss: A review

Abstract

The most straightforward way to assess the glossiness of a surface is by measuring the specular reflectance by use of a specular glossmeter. Although alternative measurement methods have been proposed, this is still the most frequently used instrumental measurement technique for gloss evaluation until today. However, due to both the multidimensional nature of gloss perception and to the initial purpose of a specular glossmeter only to judge the gloss differences of surfaces with similar appearance, specular glossmeter results do not seem to provide a reliable basis for estimating the gloss appearance of a surface. During the past decades, increased attention has been paid to understanding how the human visual system arrives at a particular sensation of surface gloss, and which factors influence this process. This article was established in response to these new insights, and provides the reader an overview of the most important developments and findings regarding gloss measurement and gloss perception over the past 15 years. With the ultimate goal to achieve a better correspondence between gloss measurement and gloss perception in the future, issues of alternative measurement methods are considered, and some suggestions for relevant future research are proposed. V

Consumer’s perception of high gloss furniture: instrumental gloss measurement versus visual gloss evaluation

“…The inconsistency between instrumental measurement and visual analysis for the gloss value is not only a widely known fact, but the reason for this inconsistency might be due to the validation method: Leloup et al (2014) attribute this insufficient result to "the fact that specular glossmeter readings were originally only intended to correlate in rank with visual judgements" (Leloup et al 2014). The same could be said about the gloss impression, as in the present study a correspondence between instrumental and sensory data was only found by using ordinal scales.…”

“…However, this method is highly limited in describing what human can perceive; therefore new approaches are needed to achieve a better correspondence to the human perception (Leloup et al 2014). The limitations of existing methods were noticed in different studies.…”

“…A variety of studies is dealing with gloss perception and all arrived at the same conclusion: There is no linear relationship between visual human perception and measured instrumental data (Billmeyer and O'Donnell 1987;Gruber et al 2012;Harrison 1949;Harrison and Poulter 1951;Leloup et al 2011;Obein et al 2004). Especially Leloup et al (2014) provide a good overview about the history of gloss measurement, existing gloss measurement techniques and their limitations. The inconsistency between instrumental and sensory data in gloss measurement is even pointed out in the International Standard for Gloss measurement: "However, it is not ensured that the obtained gloss values correspond to the visual gloss perception" (ISO 2014).…”

“…The inconsistency between instrumental and sensory data in gloss measurement is even pointed out in the International Standard for Gloss measurement: "However, it is not ensured that the obtained gloss values correspond to the visual gloss perception" (ISO 2014). Therefore, Leloup et al (2014) highlighted the need for new methods which are suitable for soft metrology of surface gloss, in other words, methods to characterize gloss which have satisfactory correspondence to human gloss appraisal.…”

Surface Color Measurement Uncertainties

“…[2][3][4] Also, as novel material technology has grown and its application has extended to commercial products to cause complex color perception such as gloss, pearlescence, texture, and goniochromatism, new measurement techniques have been developed to characterize material properties with relevance to the complex color perception. [5][6][7][8] On account of such development of colorimetry and its industrial applications, surface color measurements have been investigated in terms of an uncertainty. An uncertainty in surface color measurements is interpreted as a detection threshold of color difference, .i.e., it is analogous to the color discrimination of human eyes.…”