Optimization of quinacridone magenta,Cu-phthalocyanine cyan,and arylide yellow ink films formulated for maximum color gamut

Investigation of ink formulation options with the purpose to obtain color-gamut-optimal set of Cyan Magenta and Yellow CMY inks is reported. Implementation of the thickness dependent Kubelka-Munk model on multiple ink layers having different and well-defined thicknesses, provides characteristic absorption and scattering (K, S ) spectra of the ink ingredients. These data enable accurate computation of the reflectance spectrum and thus the L*a*b* color coordinates for any given ink thickness or substrate. Pigment materials investigated are quinacridone as magenta, copper-phthalocyanine as cyan, and arylide yellow. Scaling the peak of the absorption band to the number of molecules per unit area for the specific pigments studied in this article provides the molar extinction coefficients, 1.21 × 10⁴ , 4.7 × 10⁴ , and 3.3 × 10⁴ cm²/millimole respectively, regardless of the different ink formulations used, in accord with Avogadro's principle. Having a set of three pairs of K, S spectra is used to compute the color gamut of any CMY color combination in the L*a*b* space as a function of ink layer thickness and formulation. Using an iterative algorithm, a color-gamut-optimal set of CMY inks is obtained.     

Evaluation of expanded gamut software solutions for spot color reproduction

Expanded gamut printing is an approach in color reproduction that expands the color gamut of conventional CMYK printing processes via the use of additional colorants, such as Orange, Green, and Violet inks. This study evaluates the ability of commercial color management software to create an accurate solution for an expanded gamut printing system. In this study, two printing processes were used, an Epson SureColor P9000 inkjet printer/proofer and an HP Indigo 7900 digital production press, both with 7-color expanded gamut ink sets. Software solutions from Alwan, CGS ORIS, ColorLogic, GMG Color, Heidelberg, and Kodak were evaluated. The systems were tested to see how well they could reproduce the colors in the entire PANTONE+ Solid Coated spot color library. It is shown that the solutions are able to reproduce 89% to 94% of the spot colors on the Epson P9000 inkjet printer and 77% to 87% of the library on the Indigo 7900, both to less than two CIEDE2000 (a typical tolerance in label and packaging work). The number of color patches in expanded gamut characterization test charts was noted, as this is still an area of proprietary, nonstandardized working practice. There are many different colorant combinations that can make the same color in expanded gamut printing. The ink build created by the different software solutions was studied, as it relates to press stability through appropriate choice of colorants. Pantone and Adobe provide everyday commercial tools for expanded color workflows. The study identified some issues with products from these companies that could confuse a less-skilled user in a busy production environment. The conclusion of the study is that expanded gamut solutions for spot color printing produce totally acceptable results for digital printing processes; expanded gamut printing is ready, here and now. The findings show that expanded gamut printing can replace cumbersome conventional spot color workflows creating considerable savings and advantages, especially for label and packaging printers.     

Let's call it “color‐gamut rendering”

The term “color gamut” historically has been associated with color output such as optimal color stimuli and additive and subtractive imaging systems. Recently, this term has been used with input devices such as scanners and digital cameras. It is proposed that the term “color‐gamut rendering” should be used instead of input devices. This clarifies the distinction between input (analysis) and output (synthesis) color systems in terms of the effect of an input system on defining the colorimetric properties of an output system. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 32, 334–335, 2007     

Extending the color gamut and dynamic range of an sRGB image using a residual image

Image sources, such as digital camera captures and photographic negatives, typically have more information than can be reproduced on a photographic print or a video display. The information that is lost during the tone/color rendering process relates to both the extended dynamic range and color gamut of the original scene. In conventional photographic systems, most of this additional information is archived on the photographic negative and can be accessed by adjusting the way the negative is printed. However, most digital imaging systems have traditionally archived only a rendered video RGB image. As a result, it is not possible to make the same sorts of image manipulations that historically have been possible with conventional photographic systems. This suggests that there would be an advantage to storing images using an extended dynamic range/color gamut color encoding. However, because of file compatibility issues, digital imaging systems that store images using color encoding other than a standard video RGB representation (e.g., sRGB) would be significantly disadvantaged in the marketplace. In this article, we describe a solution that has been developed to maintain compatibility with existing file formats and software applications, while simultaneously retaining the extended dynamic range and color gamut information associated with the original scenes. With this approach, the input raw digital camera image or film scan is first transformed to the scene‐referred ERIMM RGB color encoding. Next, a rendered sRGB image is formed in the usual way and stored in a conventional image file (e.g., a standard JPEG file). A residual image representing the difference between the original extended dynamic range image and the final rendered image is formed and stored in the image file using proprietary metadata tags. This provides a mechanism for archiving the extended dynamic range/color gamut information, which is normally discarded during the rendering process, without sacrificing interoperability. Appropriately enabled applications can decode the residual image metadata and use it to reconstruct the ERIMM RGB image, whereas applications that are not aware of the metadata will ignore it and only have access to the sRGB image. The residual image is formed such that it will have negligible pixel values for those portions of the image that lie within the sRGB gamut, and will therefore be highly compressible. Tests on a population of 950 real customer images have demonstrated that the extended dynamic range scene information can be stored with an average file size overhead of about 8% compared to the sRGB images alone. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 28, 251–266, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.10160     

Spectral color reproduction minimizing spectral and perceptual color differences

In this article, we are combining minimization criteria in the colorant separation process for spectral color reproduction. The colorant separation is performed by inverting a spectral printer model: the spectral Yule‐Nielsen modified Neugebauer model. The inversion of the spectral printer model is an optimization operation in which a criterion is minimized at each iteration. The approach we proposed minimizes a criterion defined by the weighted sum of a spectral difference and a perceptual color difference. The weights can be tuned with a parameter α ∞ [0, 1]. Our goal is to decrease the spectral difference between the original data and its reproduction and also to consider perceptual color difference under different illuminant conditions. In order to find the best α value, we initially compare a pure colorimetric criterion and a pure spectral criterion for the reproduction, then we combine them. We perform four colorant separations: the first separation will minimize the 1976 CIELAB color difference where four illuminants are tested, the second separation will minimize an equally weighted summation of 1976 CIELAB color difference with the four illuminants tested independently, the third colorant separation will minimize a spectral difference, and the fourth colorant separation will combine a weighted sum of a spectral difference and one of the two first colorimetric differences previously introduced. This last colorant separation can be tuned with a parameter in order to emphasize on spectral or colorimetric difference. We use a six colorants printer with artificial inks for our experiments. The prints are simulated by the spectral Yule‐Nielsen modified Neugebauer model. Two groups of data are used for our experiments. The first group describes the data printed by our printing system, which is represented by a regular grid in colorant space of the printer and the second group describes the data which is not originally produced by our printing system but mapped to the spectral printer gamut. The Esser test chart and the Macbeth Color Checker test chart have been selected for the second group. Spectral gamut mapping of this data is carried out before performing colorant separation. Our results show improvement for the colorant separations combining a sum of 1976 CIELAB color difference for a set of illuminants and for the colorant separation combining a sum of 1976 CIELAB color difference and spectral difference, especially in the case of spectral data originally produced by the printer. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 33, 494–504, 2008     

Perceptual evaluation of color gamut mapping algorithms

The recommendation of the CIE has been followed as closely as possible to evaluate the accuracy of five color gamut mapping algorithms (GMAs)—two nonspatial and three spatial algorithms—by psychophysical experiments with 20 test images, 20 observers, one test done on paper and a second one on display. Even though the results do not show any overall “winner,” one GMA is definitely perceived as not accurate. The importance of a high number of test images to obtain robust evaluation is underlined by the high variability of the results depending on the test images. Significant correlations between the percentage of out‐of‐gamut pixels, the number of distinguishable pairs of GMAs, and the perceived difficulty to distinguish them have been found. The type of observers is also important. The experts, who prefer a spatial GMA, show a stronger consensus and look especially for a good rendering of details, whereas the nonexperts hardly make a difference between the GMAs. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 33, 470–476, 2008     

Wide gamut LCD using locally dimmable four‐primary‐color LED backlight

This paper proposes a wide gamut LCD using locally dimmable four‐primary‐color (4PC) LED backlight. Although the color gamut of LCDs has been improved in recent years, it is insufficient to reproduce all the colors in the real world. The objective of this paper is to propose a wide gamut LCD that reproduces all the colors in the real world while keeping the cost increases to a minimum. We evaluated the color gamut reproduced by LEDs of multiple primary colors and selected cyan as the optimal color to be added to the three primary colors to reproduce all the colors in the real world. Therefore, we designed an LED backlight consisting of an additional only‐cyan LED with three‐primary‐color LEDs and developed a prototype LCD with 4PC LED backlight. Furthermore, we developed a local dimming algorithm for the 4PC LED backlight. As a result, we confirmed that the prototype LCD with the 4PC LED backlight is able to cover almost all the colors in the real world and also able to display natural images with highly saturated colors by local dimming.     

New display concept for realistic reproduction of high-luminance colors

A new display concept for reproduction of high-luminance colors based on a liquid crystal display has been developed using a brighter backlight unit and color mapping algorithms. The new concept is able to display brighter colors close to a peak luminance of a display white than conventional displays so that realistic scene of brighter colors is better reproduced. It may also be one of the future display solutions needed to extend the color gamut in the direction of brighter colors, which is a principal limitation in conventional displays even in high-dynamic range display systems. With the new concept, an xvYCC- (extended-video YCbCr) compatible display can be easily realized.