| Abstract: | Abstract— Color characterization is an important step towards achieving accurate color on displays. The characterization process typically uses colorimetric or spectrophotometric instruments to measure displayed colors, and relates these to digital values driving the device. Such measurements can be impractical for consumer applications. This paper presents two techniques for characterizing a display's tone response with no colorimetric or spectrophotometric measurements. The first is a visual technique applicable to devices that exhibit a “gamma” response, such as the cathode‐ray tube. The novelty lies in the replacement of the standard luminance matching with gray‐balancing for the blue channel. This approach substantially reduces observer variation in the gamma estimates for the blue channel. The second technique is applicable for the more general case of devices that do not conform to the gamma response, such as LCDs. The visual task is augmented with a consumer digital camera used as a color‐capture device. The camera tone response is first characterized via a visual task. The characterized camera is then treated as a colorimeter and used to generate a tone‐response characterization for the display. Experiments conducted on projection displays demonstrate that satisfactory quality can be achieved while eliminating the need for costly and tedious measurement. |
