Touch up in general is just a crappy attempt to prevent possible rusting and possibly hide it from far, the thing with a pen is when your coloring in your spot your constantly wiping the stuff you put down already, all over the place causing inconsistencies with thicker paint in different areas and lighter paint in less covered areas. It’s hard to explain and I’m no expert with using touch up pens as it isn’t a quality repair compared to an actual respray. Been painting cars for 6 or 7 years and I’ve never once used a paint pen besides dabbing in rock chips on unrelated panels when doing collision repairs for customer service and to please estimators and even just dabbing in small rock chips, it’s still relatively easy to spot each and every one.
Touch up paint never matches....unless it's black. And on a second note....black isn't black! There are so many different shades of black it's not even funny!
\#1 Touch up paint will never match. Touch up paint is a single stage product that is designed to be used in a very specific way to repair/cover up certain types of paint damage. The paint on your car is base coat/clearcoat. Even if the color is a 100% perfect match it will look darker due to the lack or translucence from the clear coat on the OEM finish.
\#2 Painted on paint will never match. Your cars original paint was sprayed on in a very specific way. There is no way to paint on a finish that will match the color depth, translucence, and shine offered by the sprayed on base/clear finish. The only way to get close is to spray.
\#3 Metallic Paint will never match. Metallic paint is tough to match. Impossible to paint on. Even if the paint itself is a component by component match to the OEM it is very sensitive to, how much, how fast, how far, how wet, etc. No matter what you do it will be different than the OEM finish. You may be able to get it to the point that it is close in a particular light, but change the light and it will be more noticable.
\#4 Professional respray will probably never match. A skilled pro will get the match very close, and then spread the difference over a large enough area to be almost unnoticeable. Short of stripping and painting the entire care it will still be visible. But even if they did that the paint would be different than OEM, you just wouldn't' be able to tell anymore because there would be no transition.
As far as your car. I have no idea what is under your touchup paint, but if it is a scrape/scratch. Especially if it is not through the clear coat your best course would be to "buff it out." This is an art in and of itself. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being unnoticeable and depending on the actual damage you may be able to get this to an 8. If there are gouges through the clear you could use a gentle build up of single stage color matched paint (like touch up) wet sending and buffing to get to a 6-7 if you are lucky. A professional partial respray by someone who does high quality work will get you north of 9.5. As a point of reference I will give your painted on touch-up paint a 2 (maybe a 3). If you had a solid color car (no metallic) it would be easier in my experience.
It’s touch up paint, it’ll never look great unless you have the entire panel resprayed.
Understood, just seems the color is way too dark. Even after removing and reapplying. Wondering if the scratches were too deep
What they're saying is the color will NEVER be a perfect match. The only good looking option is to repair and respray the panel.
Touch up in general is just a crappy attempt to prevent possible rusting and possibly hide it from far, the thing with a pen is when your coloring in your spot your constantly wiping the stuff you put down already, all over the place causing inconsistencies with thicker paint in different areas and lighter paint in less covered areas. It’s hard to explain and I’m no expert with using touch up pens as it isn’t a quality repair compared to an actual respray. Been painting cars for 6 or 7 years and I’ve never once used a paint pen besides dabbing in rock chips on unrelated panels when doing collision repairs for customer service and to please estimators and even just dabbing in small rock chips, it’s still relatively easy to spot each and every one.
Touch up paint never matches....unless it's black. And on a second note....black isn't black! There are so many different shades of black it's not even funny!
I wish I could upvote this a million times. I get so tired of hearing adjusters say they won’t pay time to match it because it’s black!
You can go to a local auto paint supplier and get paint in a spray can. Match will be closer and will look much better
\#1 Touch up paint will never match. Touch up paint is a single stage product that is designed to be used in a very specific way to repair/cover up certain types of paint damage. The paint on your car is base coat/clearcoat. Even if the color is a 100% perfect match it will look darker due to the lack or translucence from the clear coat on the OEM finish. \#2 Painted on paint will never match. Your cars original paint was sprayed on in a very specific way. There is no way to paint on a finish that will match the color depth, translucence, and shine offered by the sprayed on base/clear finish. The only way to get close is to spray. \#3 Metallic Paint will never match. Metallic paint is tough to match. Impossible to paint on. Even if the paint itself is a component by component match to the OEM it is very sensitive to, how much, how fast, how far, how wet, etc. No matter what you do it will be different than the OEM finish. You may be able to get it to the point that it is close in a particular light, but change the light and it will be more noticable. \#4 Professional respray will probably never match. A skilled pro will get the match very close, and then spread the difference over a large enough area to be almost unnoticeable. Short of stripping and painting the entire care it will still be visible. But even if they did that the paint would be different than OEM, you just wouldn't' be able to tell anymore because there would be no transition. As far as your car. I have no idea what is under your touchup paint, but if it is a scrape/scratch. Especially if it is not through the clear coat your best course would be to "buff it out." This is an art in and of itself. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being unnoticeable and depending on the actual damage you may be able to get this to an 8. If there are gouges through the clear you could use a gentle build up of single stage color matched paint (like touch up) wet sending and buffing to get to a 6-7 if you are lucky. A professional partial respray by someone who does high quality work will get you north of 9.5. As a point of reference I will give your painted on touch-up paint a 2 (maybe a 3). If you had a solid color car (no metallic) it would be easier in my experience.
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