High Gloss Mode
High Gloss Mode overview
High Gloss Mode evaluates smooth, reflective surfaces where visual impression is critical, such as painted panels, plastics, decorative metals, glass and high‑gloss coatings. TAMS projects a series of patterns onto the surface and uses techniques such as Phase Measurement Deflectometry, Optical Transfer Function analysis and line deformation methods to characterise how the surface reflects and distorts these patterns. This behaviour is condensed into a set of perception‑based metrics, so users can see at a glance how good a finish looks and how closely different parts or samples match.
Quality and Harmony metrics
High Gloss Mode reports two main indices: Quality (Q) and Harmony (H).
- Quality (Q) describes the overall visual appearance of a high gloss surface, combining contrast, sharpness and waviness into a single 0–100% value, where 0% indicates a poor, dull or highly distorted finish and 100% represents a mirror‑like surface.
- Harmony (H) describes how similar two high gloss surfaces are when viewed side by side, for example adjacent panels or reference versus production. A value below 1 suggests that most observers would accept the difference in texture and orange peel between the two; values above 1 indicate differences that many viewers are likely to notice and find unacceptable.
These indices are designed to follow how people actually judge surfaces, making them suitable for specification, process control and communication with non‑specialists.
Colour‑dependent perception in High Gloss Mode
TAMS Quality automatically includes basecoat colour through the contrast parameter, so dark and light colours are handled correctly. Contrast depends on colour—white and metallic finishes have low contrast, while deep black can approach 100%—which changes how strongly texture, haze and DOI are seen.
Because colour is built into the measurement, surfaces with very different colours can be controlled on the same Quality and Harmony scale, instead of using separate limits or rules for each colour shade. This simplifies specifications and ensures that appearance control reflects what people actually see on the finished product.
Underlying appearance parameters
To calculate Quality and Harmony, TAMS first extracts several sub‑characteristics from the reflected image.
- Contrast (C) measures the difference between bright highlights and dark areas in the reflection and is directly linked to surface colour: deep black, high‑impact finishes give high contrast, while white and metallic surfaces have low contrast.
- Sharpness (S) quantifies how clearly details are reflected. At close distances it indicates how well fine features are reproduced; at normal viewing distance it is closely related to haze and clarity. Values range from 0% (blurred, low definition) to 100% (very crisp reflection).
- Waviness (W) describes the overall wave‑like distortion of the reflection caused by larger‑scale texture or orange peel. A value of 0 corresponds to a visually flat surface with minimal distortion; values up to around 30 represent increasingly wavy, distorted reflections.
- Dimension (D) indicates the dominant texture scale seen at a typical viewing distance of around 1.5 m. It is expressed in millimetres, typically between 0.5 and 8 mm, and helps distinguish fine, tight texture from coarse, large‑scale structure.
Together, these parameters allow High Gloss Mode to summarise complex reflection behaviour into intuitive numbers that match visual perception and support both quality control and process optimisation on any high gloss surface.