Color Approval

How to use the system, by the part you play in it.

What this is

A retailer sets a color standard and asks a supply chain to match it. Mills and vendors submit attempts; the retailer accepts or rejects them. This system carries that conversation, keeps the measurements, and records who decided what and when.

Four kinds of account, doing different things:

Signing in

Open the site and enter your user name and password. What you see afterwards depends on your account type, so if the page looks different from a colleague's, that is usually why rather than a fault.

The three stages

Every job runs through the same three stages in order:

A stage completes when one of its submits is accepted — either Approved or Best Can Do. The job then moves to the next stage. If everything in a round is rejected, the same stage runs again with a fresh round.

Rounds

A round is the set of submits decided together. How a round forms differs by stage, and it matters:

Lab Dip and First Bulk

Everything added at once is one round, and it is decided as a set. These rounds are exclusive: accepting one submit rejects the others automatically. You are choosing the best of the batch, so accepting two would be a contradiction.

Subsequent Bulk

Submits arrive whenever production runs, and the retailer decides whatever they choose to decide at the time. A round here is simply whatever was decided together. These rounds are inclusive: accepting one says nothing about any other. Decide three of ten today, and the other seven stay pending while more can still be added.

The jobs page

The table lists every job you can see. Each column has a filter beneath its heading, as a spreadsheet does: type into the text ones, choose from the dropdowns, pick a date on the date ones. A filter that is set is outlined in blue, the count beside the job total says how many are active, and a Clear filters button appears while any are.

Click a column heading to sort by it; click again to reverse.

Two columns are the ones to watch:

• Digital Status or Physical Status — where the current stage stands
• Next Stage — what is waiting to happen, and a link if you are the one who can do it

Click the job reference in the first column to open a job at any time, whether or not anything is waiting.

The four job types

Every type runs through the same three stages, the same rounds and the same decisions. They differ in what arrives and how much of it.

What a submission means on a print

This is the part worth being clear about, because it is where the counting gets confusing.

On a six-color print, one submission is one piece of printed cloth — but six measurements, one per color. Send three pieces and there are three submissions and eighteen individual readings.

Those eighteen carry only three names and three comments between them, because three things were sent. Each submission's six readings share its label: LDE1 Welsh Red WR6, LDE1 Natural Indigo NI6, and so on.

Styles and item descriptions

A job can carry up to 20 style numbers and 10 item descriptions. One color program often spans several styles, and a style can be described more than one way.

Anyone on the job can change these, at any stage. Click edit beside the style on the job's top line. Add rows, clear a box to remove that entry, save. At least one of each must remain.

That is deliberately open. A style number is administrative rather than commercial, it is often incomplete when a job is raised, and the person who knows the right answer is as likely to be at the mill as at the retailer. Nothing about a color decision depends on it.

Images

Every job has an Images tab. Anyone who can see the job may add an image at any point, with a name and a comment. JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP, up to 5 MB each.

They are shown in two groups:

• From the retailer — usually the reference: the thing being matched to
• From the vendor, mill and others — usually evidence of what was made

You can edit or remove your own images. Someone else's are shown but not editable: the name and comment are their words.

Retailer
Raising a request

Click + New request. Choose the standard color, the material, the vendor, the mill, the brand and the season, then type an item description and a style number. An intermediate is optional.

Pick the job type:

The job appears with Next Stage reading Add Lab Dip.

Duplicates are refused

If a job already exists with the same combination of fields, creation is blocked with a message naming them — for example "A job with this combination of Standard color, Material, Vendor, Mill, Season, Style number already exists (J000004)."

Which fields count is set by an admin on the Unique combination page. Hidden jobs are not counted, so a mistake that has been hidden frees its combination for reuse.

Retailer
Print jobs

Choose Multi Color (Print) Digital or Physical and the form asks for a pattern name and the colors instead of a single standard.

Start with two colors and add one at a time, up to twenty. Each is a standard from the library, chosen by name — Welsh Red WR6, Natural Indigo NI6. The order you set is the order everyone sees, and it does not change afterwards.

Retailer
Images on a request

The request form has an Images section. Drop or choose a file, name it, add a comment, add more. They are held until the job is created and attached immediately afterwards, landing in the retailer section of the Images tab.

This matters most on a print, where the retailer's image is often part of the target itself — the thing a mill is matching to. Attaching it at creation means the first person to open the job sees it.

Retailer
Reviewing submits

When Next Stage reads Needs Review, click it. The job opens on a page with a scope selector across the top and three tabs beneath it.

The scope chooses which submits you are looking at:

Reviewing a print

A print job adds a bar above the tabs. What it offers depends on which tab you are on, because the two ask different questions:

That split is not arbitrary. A plot is a geometry built around one standard, so mixing colors into one cloud would put points at distances that mean nothing. A table is a list, so listing a submission's colors together is exactly right.

On the plot, every submission is listed with its own Overall decision, so deciding a point moves the right one. On the tables, the Overall decision is that submission's.

Retailer
The four views

The same submits, four ways of looking at them. Use whichever makes the decision clearest — they are not alternatives so much as different questions.

Colorimetric

The numbers. One line per illuminant for each submit: ΔE, ΔL, Δa, Δb, whether it is in tolerance, and the L*a*b* values. The decision buttons sit on the row, so you judge where the numbers are.

3D View

The submits plotted around the standard, which sits at the origin. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom, right-drag or shift-drag to pan. The green shell is the tolerance boundary: inside it is a match, outside it is not.

Hover a point for its numbers and, if you are a retailer, the same decision buttons. ab view looks straight down for a top-down chromaticity view; Reset reframes the camera.

Reflectance

The measured curve of each submit against the standard's, across the visible spectrum. Hover anywhere to read the nearest curve's value at that wavelength.

This is the view that explains why two colors differ, rather than by how much. Two curves that cross rather than sit parallel are a metameric pair: they will agree under one light and part company under another, and no amount of adjusting depth will fix it. The dye combination has to change.

Color Swatches

Each submit laid on a field of the standard's own color, one field per illuminant. A difference that vanishes against white is obvious against the shade it is meant to match.

Retailer
Making decisions

Four buttons on each submit:

Decisions are made under the primary illuminant

The In Tol column, and the decision buttons, follow the primary illuminant alone. The second one is shown for information: it tells you whether a match will hold up under another light, which is worth knowing and worth discussing, but it does not decide anything.

On the 3D view the illuminant selector marks the primary as (decides). Viewing a secondary shows the standing decision rather than the buttons, so nothing can be decided on the wrong basis by accident.

Deciding a print

Two ways, and they reach the same place:

• Set the Overall decision — one click sets every color of that submission at once. Usually what you mean, since a print is accepted or refused as a whole.
• Decide each color — approve them one at a time and the overall follows: approved when all are, Best Can Do when any concession was needed, rejected the moment one is.

Either way, accepting one submission rejects the others in the round — every color of them. And nothing saves until Update.

Nothing is saved until you click Update

Decisions are a draft while you work. Accept one submit in a Lab Dip or First Bulk round and the others immediately show as Rejected — that is the exclusive rule at work. Change your mind and accept a different one, and the first falls back to Rejected.

Rows you have changed are marked unsaved, and the Update button says how many changes are pending. Click Update to write them.

Comments

Click the speech bubble on any row to open its thread. Mills and vendors can reply, so this is where the reasoning lives — why a submit was rejected, what to change. A comment the sender added when uploading appears in italics beside the submit name.

Retailer
Physical jobs

A physical submit has no measurement — there is nothing to compute until the cloth is in your hand. So a Solid Physical job shows a Decisions tab instead of the three color views: submit name, the sender's comment, the ETA, the air waybill and your decision.

The ETA and waybill apply to the whole consignment and are shown once at the top. Everything else works identically — the same stages, the same exclusive rounds, the same draft-then-Update.

Vendor
What you see

Every job naming your company, and no others. You cannot see another vendor's jobs, and they cannot see yours.

You can open any of your jobs and see everything the retailer sees: the numbers, the 3D plot, the swatches, the full history. What you cannot do is decide. The decision buttons appear as status labels for you.

Vendor
Adding submits

When Next Stage reads Add Lab Dip, Add First Bulk or Add Sub Bulk, click it.

Digital jobs — two steps

1. Choose. Drop the QTX file. Every reading in it appears as a tile on a field of the standard's color, with its ΔE under each illuminant. Nothing is ticked to begin with — click the ones you want to send.
2. Name and annotate. Click Add comments. Only the readings you ticked are shown, each with an assigned name (LDE1, LDE2 …) and the batch name from the file in an editable field. Add a comment to any of them. Comments are optional.

Back returns to the tiles with everything you typed intact, so you can change your selection without losing your notes. When you are ready, click Add submits.

Physical jobs

Say how many samples are coming, then name them. Each gets a consecutive label (LD1, LD2 …) to which you can add your own suffix, plus an optional comment. The ETA and air waybill are asked once and apply to the whole consignment, since the samples travel together.

Print jobs

The upload walks the colors one at a time. Choose the tab for a color, drop its QTX, tick the readings; move to the next color and do the same. The tab shows a count of what you have ticked for each.

Then Add comments. You are naming submissions, not readings — so a three-piece submission of a six-color print gives three names and three comments, not eighteen. Each shows which reading was chosen for each color, by name.

Vendor
Tracking progress

Filter the jobs page by Digital Status to see where things stand. Review means the retailer has it. Rejected means another round is needed.

Once a submit is approved, the Next Stage column tells you what is wanted next.

Mill
What you see

Every job naming your company, and no others. As with a vendor, you see the same data the retailer sees but cannot make decisions.

Mill
Adding submits

Identical to the vendor flow above: choose the readings from the QTX, then name and comment on them, then Add submits. For physical jobs, enter a count and name them.

Mill
Reading a rejection

When a submit is rejected, the numbers say how it missed. Open the job and look at the Colorimetric tab:

Signs are always your submit minus the standard, which is the convention every other package uses.

The retailer's comment thread on the submit is where any further explanation will be. Reply there rather than by email, so the reasoning stays with the measurement.

Admin
Hiding and removing jobs

An admin signs in to a different page: a list of every job, hidden ones included, with tick boxes. Admins have no working jobs page — they do not raise requests, add submits or decide — but they are the only account that can hide or remove.

Hiding

A hidden job disappears from the jobs page, from color history, and from the duplicate check. Nothing is deleted: the submits, decisions, comments and images all stay, so a job hidden in error comes back whole.

Hiding is how a mistaken job stops blocking the combination it used, so the right one can be raised.

Removing

Permanent. It deletes the job, its submits, decisions, comments and image files. There is no undo.

Doing it

Filter the list, tick Hide or Remove on one or more rows, then click Update. A confirmation names exactly what will happen — how many will be hidden, unhidden and removed — before anything is done.

Admin
Unique combination

The Unique combination button opens the page that decides what counts as the same job. Tick the fields that together identify one. A new job matching an existing one on all of them is refused.

There is no right answer, which is why it is a setting. One retailer treats two seasons of the same shade and style as distinct jobs; another does not.

Saving reports how many existing jobs already share the combination. Those are left alone — tightening the rule does not retrospectively delete anything — but new jobs matching them will be refused, and it is better to know that at the moment you set it than to be puzzled later.

Ticking nothing turns duplicate checking off entirely, which is a legitimate choice rather than a misconfiguration.

Colors in the plot

In the 3D and ab views, each submit is a sphere filled with its own color and ringed with its decision:

The standard is not drawn as a point — it is the origin everything else is measured from. The translucent green shell is the tolerance boundary.

Rings follow your draft, so a submit you have just approved turns green immediately, before you click Update.

A key in the corner of the plot says which color is which. The standard is not drawn as a point — it is the origin everything else is measured from.

On a print, submit names are turned on by default, because the three or four points are one per submission and there would otherwise be no telling them apart. On a solid job with twenty batches they stay off, where they would be an unreadable mat.

Color history

Set the scope to Color history to see every submit ever measured against this standard, on any job, by anyone.

Company names are not shown. Each row is marked only own or other, with a tick box for each so you can look at one, the other or both.

This is the most useful view for a question like "has anyone ever matched this shade well?" — and the answer is often more informative than another round of trying.

If something looks wrong

The numbers changed and nothing else did

Every ΔE is recomputed from the stored spectra under the illuminants currently set. If an administrator changes the illuminant or the tolerance, every historical figure changes with it. That is intended: the measurement is the spectrum, and the numbers are derived from it.

A swatch looks nothing like the sample

See the warning under Color Swatches. A monitor cannot reproduce a viewing booth, and saturated colors are outside its range entirely. Trust the numbers.

The 3D view is blank

If a message appears explaining why, send it on — it names the fault. If the view is simply empty, there may be no submits in the current scope; try switching to Job.

I cannot change a decision

Saved decisions are final by design. If one was made in error, add a comment explaining so — the record then shows both the decision and the correction, which is more honest than an edit that leaves no trace.

I approved both colors but Update stayed greyed out

This was a fault and is fixed. If it happens, the message will name two submissions it thinks are both accepted — send it on.

The job I was looking at showed the wrong data

Also a fault, also fixed: opening a second job could leave the first one's tab on screen. If a job looks like someone else's, close and reopen it.

A link I expected is plain text

The action is not available to your account type, or not at this stage. Only a retailer raises requests and decides; intermediates cannot upload.