Quantification and application of blackness based on Munsell color system

In the leather and textile industry, assessing the degree of black and white in dyed samples is one of the most challenging tasks. Current methods for characterizing blackness typically adopt methods describing whiteness, including “CIE wavelength method”, “absorbance comparison method”, “ISO whiteness measurement method”, etc., where lower whiteness implies higher blackness. However, these methods lack consistency between quantification and human perception, especially at low levels of whiteness. Through the research on the Munsell color system, this paper reveals a stable correspondence between the blackness value of dark object and the sum of their spectral reflectance. Based on this finding, we measured the spectral reflectance of 324 low luminance colors in the Munsell system and analyzed the relationship between reflectance and the blackness value. Using the Levenberg-Marquardt interpolation algorithm, a model was established between reflectance and blackness, with a standard deviation range of 0.23-1.10. Validation was conducted on dyed leather samples, demonstrating that the results align with visual matching using Munsell color chips. Due to its numerical continuity, the results hold more quantitative comparative value than the Munsell system alone, thus proving the applicability of this model in characterizing object blackness.