To measure process color is it better to use a spectrometery or density, hue, and gray?
It is better to use spectrophotometry if you are interested in measuring the color appearance, but it might be better/simpler to measure density if you are only interested in the amount of ink present (and you don’t measure different types of inks). Densitometers are designed to measure amounts of colorant (ink, dye, pigment, etc.) and not what the color looks like to humans. Spectrophotometers can be used to provide colorimetric parameters that correlate more closely with human perception. Thus, if you are measuring different sets of inks or different types of materials it is possible for density readings to match when the color doesn’t.
