get area of the photo. The app also includes a color wheel,
which shows the selected color in relation to the rest of the
spectrum, arranged as a wheel. There also is a favorites
icon, used to store such photos. And there is a store locator
to find the closest place to order, based on the iPhones’ GPS
capability.
In our case, Peterson’s Paint, in Santa Rosa, CA, was the
closest, and we ordered a quart of Province Blue by phone.
Other retailers permit customers to order over the Internet
and arrange for shipping, if not leaving home is desirable.
“I’m thrilled about the new application,” said Sean Lile,
owner of Peterson’s, which carries a full line of Benjamin
Moore products. “Any time technology can help you out
with a choice for color for your home that’s great. This will
replace some in-store scanning, but these are just some of
the tools to help with color choices.”
Customers come into the store every day with a patch of
something they want scanned, Lile said. Typically, the in-store scanner requires a patch of at least one square inch to
assure accuracy. The in-store scanners used in Benjamin
Moore retail centers are either Xrite-made CF57 spectrometers or a newer model, the iVue, according to Minchew. The
iVue “provides a high degree of spectral resolution and
absolute color data across the visible spectrum at 10nm
intervals,” said Eileen McComb, the director of communications for Benjamin Moore. These machines retail for somewhere in the $4,000 to $6,000 range.
Benjamin Moore also sells a portable pocket scanner—
the Pocket Palette—to professionals for $299, offering them
the ability to scan a surface in the field and capture up to
20 colors with a single click. From there a customer can
match favorites to the closest Benjamin Moore color.
At Peterson’s Paint, Pocket Palette use by professionals
has thus far exceeded iPhone use by retail customers, but
that could change soon. “We have both sold and rented the
Pocket Palette, but in the past, they had to be brought back
in to get updated. Now I believe an owner can update
them,” said Bob Thomson, the manager of the store.
“However once a consumer or professional captures a color,
there are still light variances—inside, outside, fluorescent,
etc.—so we may need to help with selecting the sheen. The
iPhone app is great, and the Pocket Palette is better, but
man made the computer and God made the eye, so you can
guess which color is truest.”
Available as of June 1, the application is free and can
be downloaded by visiting the Apple Store web site,
www.apple.com/iphone/appstore; search for ben and
select to install. CW
The ben app is intuitive and easy-to-use. In the case of iPhone user and color designer, Annie Conn, who had decided to paint
a wall the same color as the blue eyes of her Australian shepherd mix, Sinatra, she took a photo with the built-in-camera, simply glided a finger across the digital image, zoomed into the eye area and tapped the “match” key. In just seconds, a strip of
colors appeared below the photo, with the closest paint match highlighted. A simple shake of the phone and ben will provide
up to four coordinating colors. Province Blue was the closest match in Benjamin Moore’s color system. The ben app can
access the iPhone’s GPS system, locating the Benjamin Moore retailer nearest to wherever the user is at that very moment.
In this case it was Peterson’s Paint in Santa Rosa, CA, where a quart of Province Blue was ordered over the phone and then
picked up in person.
