| The law of proportion according to which the several colors are formed, even if a man knew he would be foolish in telling, for he could not give any necessary reason, nor indeed any tolerable or probable explanation of them.
Plato
Despite Plato’s warning, this book is about one of the major unresolved issues in the field of color science, the efforts that have been made toward its resolution, and the techniques that can be used to address current technological problems. The issue is the prediction of the color appearance experienced by an observer when viewing stimuli in natural, complex settings. Useful solutions to this problem have impacts in a number of industries such as lighting, materials, and imaging. In lighting, color appearance models can be used to predict the color rendering properties of various light sources, allowing specification of quality rather than just efficiency. In materials fields (coatings, plastics, textiles, etc.), color appearance models can be used to specify tolerances across a wider variety of viewing conditions than is currently possible and to more accurately evaluate metamerism. The imaging industries have produced the biggest demand for accurate and practical color appearance models. The rapid growth in color imaging technology, particularly the desktop publishing market, has led to the emergence of color management systems. It is widely acknowledged that such systems require color appearance models to allow images originating in one medium and viewed in a particular environment to be acceptably reproduced in a second medium and viewed under different conditions. While the need for color appearance models is recognized, their development has been at the forefront of color science and largely confined to the discourse of academic journals and conferences. This book brings the fundamental issues and current solutions in the area of color appearance modeling together in a single place for those needing to solve practical problems or looking for background for ongoing research projects. |
