The converter scans its library of thousands of physical TCX swatches, searching for the color with the smallest perceptible difference to the input. A ΔE of less than 1.0 is considered imperceptible to the human eye. Advanced digital converters (such as those found in Adobe Illustrator plugins or dedicated software like Pantone Color Manager) also account for metamerism—the phenomenon where a color changes under different light sources (daylight vs. fluorescent). Thus, the converter does not just find "a close color"; it finds the cotton-dyed color that remains stable across the environments where garments and furniture are actually used.
There is no single "magic button" converter due to the physical limitations of fabric dyeing, but there are three primary ways to perform the conversion. tcx pantone converter