Digital Color Management: Encoding Solutions, 2nd Edition

18

A Unified Paradigm: Encoding Concepts

The Unified Paradigm introduced in the preceding chapter offers the promise of a comprehensive, inclusive, and unified color-management environment. However, realization of that promise requires the use of a color-encoding method that is consistent with, and fully supportive of, all aspects of the paradigm.

In this chapter, we will further explore the Unified Paradigm and introduce the basic concepts of a color-encoding method that enables the complete potential of the paradigm to be realized. The colorimetric transformations required to implement the encoding will be described in Chapter 19. How the color-encoding method can be used in practice then will be demonstrated in Chapters 20 and 21, where the Unified Paradigm, color-encoding concepts, and colorimetric transformations will be applied to a number of example color-imaging systems.

Color-encoding requirements

Figure 18.1 illustrates the application of the Unified Paradigm to a color-imaging system having a single input and a single output. This system, operating on its own, is capable of performing all the functions of the “ideal application” that was used earlier to help define the properties of the paradigm. Although the basic signal processing arrangement of this system is the same as that used in previous examples, the multiple input/output interpretation options of the paradigm have been incorporated. Each option is implemented in the form of an individual signal processing ...