The work aims to accurately evaluate the color quality of holographic prints of light pillars in cigarette packets. 11 kinds of samples with 56 pairs of ΔEab color difference ranging from 0.14 to 4.22 were collected, and 24 quality inspectors of printing enterprises were organized to carry out a comparative experiment on visual color difference. The consistency between the calculated color difference of CIELAB and CIEDE2000 and the visual color difference of human eyes was tested by standardized residual square and Stress index. The calculation performance of the original CIELAB and CIEDE2000 color difference formula was not much different. The weight optimization of brightness factor (kL), hue factor (kH) and saturation factor (kC) in the color difference formula was carried out respectively. The results showed that the weight optimization performance of hue factor (kH) was the best, which was significantly improved compared with the original color difference formula. Based on CIELAB and CIEDE2000, the maximum consistency of color difference formula calculation results and visual probability results was established as the optimization index. The calculated consistency can reach 96.4%, which can effectively improve the accuracy of color quality evaluation of cigarette light pillar holographic prints and improve the detection accuracy of enterprises.