Back in May, Benjamin Moore rolled out the red carpet of publicity for ben Color Capture, an iPhone application that lets you snap a picture and then digitally match any color in that picture to one of the 3,300 colors that comprise the Benjamin Moore color systems. If I read about it once, I read about it at least a dozen times. Well, as one of the millions of Americans who are addicted to their iPhones (I'm on my third) and the owner of a Benjamin Moore Pocket Palette (which I love), I was excited. I made a mental note to check back June 1 and download the app. Well, at some point during the first week of June, I launched the App Store and tried to download the app. Interestingly, however, I couldn't find it! I used the keywords "benjamin moore," "ben moore," "color matching," "paint color," anything I could think of. You name it, I tried it. So what do you think came up? Some random apps, to be sure, but also - drum roll, please - the Sherwin-Williams Color Snap app. What?!?!?!??!!! I could not believe my eyes. I hadn't heard one word about the Sherwin-Williams app, but here it was ... already available and easy to find. My first thought was - how on earth, with all that publicity, could Benjamin Moore either (a) not get the app up on time or (b) do such a cruddy job of employing keywords so that consumers could find its app? My second thought was - why on earth did Sherwin-Williams not publicize their application???
Well, it turns out that the App Store was notoriously non-user-friendly, so maybe my trouble locating ben Color Capture wasn't all Benjamin Moore's fault. I checked today and didn't have any problems finding the app. But how many other people had the same problem ... and found the Sherwin-Williams app? The Benjamin Moore folks should find that troubling.
Moving on to what really matters, however ... How well do the apps work? The big caveat to both of the apps is that they are necessarily dependent on how accurate the photograph's colors are. If the photograph doesn't faithfully capture the "inspiration," it's not possible to get a good color match using either ben Color Capture or Sherwin-Williams Color Snap. When trying to use my iPhone to match an existing paint color in a room that wasn't particularly well-lit, the results were disastrous.
That being said, given a particular photograph, which app provides the paint color closest to the photograph's color? My money is on Sherwin-Williams Color Snap. When working on a color for new bathroom cabinets, I used both ben Color Capture and Sherwin-Williams Color Snap to match the slightly-off-white tile. Sherwin-Williams Color Snap led me to Snowbound SW7004, which turned out to be perfect! The results using ben Color Capture were way too gray. Will I always prefer Color Snap? I'm not sure. Some of the variance was probably in what area of the photograph I used for the matching; it's hard to make sure that you are using precisely the same area. I also really like the Benjamin Moore colors generally, so I'm likely to use the Color Capture software to get the Benjamin Moore recommendation. But, at least in this instance, Color Snap was way better. So I give Round One to Sherwin-Williams. Stay tuned for Round Two!
Photo from Unpluggd