Monday 18 July 2011

RGB Values Extraction with PatchTool 3.5

In handling of spot colors,  rendering intent used is either Absolute or Relative.
1) Tiff with ProPhoto color space
      Rendering intent :  Absolute or Relative

2) Tiff with aRGB or sRGB color space
      Rendering intent : Relative

 3) Scanned Tiff image with scanner icc profile
       Rendering intent : Absolute
       Illuminant: D50


Following shows the effect due to rendering intent used for RGB value extraction with PatchTool .
Image will be too cool if wrong rendering intent was selected.
Left: correct rendering intent used                                           Right: wrong rendering intent used

Wednesday 8 June 2011

Improving Scanner Color Reproduction

In the previous post, the scanner profile was created with the same 343 patches that were used in MP4.8 for creation of rgb printer profile.


The MP reference patches are evenly distributed in the RGB space. In contrast, PM5 has more reference patches placed along the neutral and the 3 primarily axes, as shown below.


The patches were combined to form a larger reference target for generating  the scanner profile and the effect was analysed.

Results
.  The reference RGB values were extracted from the target112 tiff file.
.  The printed copy with the target112 was measured with a spectrometer, dtp41.
.  The printed copy was scanned and RGB values were extracted.



Conclusion
The extracted RGB values from the scanned data with dedicated scanner profile exhibit good correlation with the spectrometer's measurement data.

Monday 6 June 2011

Better Color Matching with Delicated Scanner Profile

Metamerism is an optical phenomenon which occurs when color of two samples appear to match under one light source (illuminant) and not match under another.

All photographic media are prone to metamerism to some degree.The created scanner profile may work unsatisfactorily if the image to be scanned is of a different material from the reflective IT8 target.

With the appropriate choice of targeting media for scanner profile creation, a high performance scanner icc profile can be generated, as illustrated below.

Test Pattern
Here is the custom test pattern that was used for the evaluation. It consists of total of 112 color patches.

Both plots were generated with the same scale

Profiles Under Evaluation
In the following test, the Test Pattern was printed with CP800 dye-sub printer and with PhotoShop CS4 using custom printer icc profile. It was scanned with an Epson V500 and the acquired image was assigned with the respective scanner profiles before converting to the working color space for RGB values extraction. The extracted RGB values were then compared with the measured data. Comparison was carried out with PatchTool and ΔE2000 standard was used  for checking differences in color matching, whereas actual color measurement was performed with a DTP41.

1) V500 generic profile
2) PM5-IT8, profile was created with Kodak IT8 reflective target.
3) MP-IT8, profile was created with Kodak IT8 reflective target.
4) Arygll-IT8, profile was created with Kodak IT8 reflective target.
5) Arygll-CP800-343, same paper medium was used for both scanner profile creation and test pattern  printout.

Comparing measured data and extracted RGB values


Above results show that reproduction of color for scanner can be improved significantly if the scanner icc profile is created with the same printing media that are used for generating the scanned images.

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Common Abbreviations in Colorimetry

CAM     Color Appearance Model , most recent model is CIECAM02 as of 2008
CGATS Graphic Arts Technologies Standards
cLUT     Color Look Up Table
CIE       CIE is the short for Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage which is the french title of the
              international commission on light
CMM    Color Matching Module
CMS     Color Management System
ICC       International Color Consortium
Lab        Lab is now more often used as an informal abbreviation for CIELAB or CIE 1976 ,
              whose coordinates are actually L*, a*, and b*.
RelCol   Relative Colorimetric
MinCD  Minimum Color Difference
OOG     Out Of Gamut
PCS      Profile Connection Space
TRC      Tone Response Curve
WCS    Windows Color Management

Saturday 19 March 2011

Evaluation of RGB calibration with CT3

Argyllcms 1.3.2
ColorThink Pro 3 [ link ]
Scanner target: Kodak IT8 Q60 reflective
Epson V500 scanner

Comparison:  
                       a) colprof -v -qh -ax scanner
                       b) colprof -v -qh -ax -u scanner
                       c) colprof -v -qh -ax -un scanner
                       d) MP - profile created with Monaco Profiler 4.8


Evaluate device RGB neutrals
  

Enlarged view: near White
 
Enlarged view: near Black


with option -al,  from different perspective
 
Note:
The L-axis represents the ideal neutral gray or R=G=B.  The goal of most gamut mapping algorithms is to map source neutrals to device neutrals. A better calibrated profile would have neutral points stay closer to the neutral axis.

Argyll scanner profiles' AtoB & BtoA tags

Argyllcms 1.3.2
Scanner target: Kodak IT8 Q60 reflective
Commands:
                     a) colprof -v -qh -al scanner
                     b) colprof -v -qh -al -u scanner      (Forces cLUT profile absolute)
                     c) colprof -v -qh -al -un scanner    (Forces cLUT profile absolute but cLUT white &
                                                                             black points will not be extrapolated with matrix)
Option -u
The -u option causes the lut based input profile to be generated in such a way that the lut table defaults to absolute color values, in that the white of the reference chart will be mapped to its absolute value. Any value whiter than the white reference will not be clipped by the profile, wheares values outside the range of the reference chart will be extrapolated.


AtoB tag





BtoA tag



Friday 18 March 2011

Perfect White Point for scanner profile

Perfect White Point for non-Absolte Colorimetric Intents

Monaco profiler 4.8
XYZ: 0.9641876, 1., 0.8248901
Lab: 100.00, -0.018456, 0.017265

PhotoGamutRGB_avg6c.icc  < Link >
XYZ: 0.9641724, 1., 0.8248749
Lab: 100.00, -0.0210935, 0.0184981

a) ArgyIIcms 1.3.2
b) Basiccolor display 4.1.22
c) Epson (perv50_r.icm, perv50_r.icm)
XYZ: 0.9642029, 1., 0.8249054
Lab: 100.00, -0.0158185, 0.016032