Give a colour a name — a real one, an invented one, a nonsense one. The bench works out what shade has to answer to that name, mixes it, and writes the tint formula.
Words it recognises set a hue, a chroma and a value, blended in the order you wrote them — the first word is the pot, each one after pulls the hue over by as much chroma as it brings. Words like drowned, burnt or expensive bend whatever the others landed on.
Words it has never seen still count. It reads those by sound: hard consonants come out darker and sharper, open vowels lighter and rounder. So Krkzt is a colour, and so is Oomlaboo.
A name always returns the same shade. Re-read takes the same name a second way, for when the first reading isn't the one you meant.