Digital Color Management: Encoding Solutions, 2nd Edition

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A Unified Paradigm: Example Systems

In this chapter, the Unified Paradigm and its associated color-encoding method will be explored further and demonstrated using a series of simple example systems in which various inputs, outputs, and image-interpretation options are selected.

The first task in designing each of these example systems, as well as any other color-imaging system based on the paradigm, is to define the reference viewing conditions for the color encoding specification. In practice, it might be advantageous to define these conditions differently for different systems. However, for illustration purposes, in this chapter we will specify a single set of encoding reference conditions. Doing so will allow us to focus our attention on the various types of colorimetric transformations required when the viewing conditions of actual inputs or outputs differ from those specified for the encoding reference.

In theory, encoding reference viewing conditions can be chosen essentially arbitrarily. It is more practical, however, to select conditions that are representative of those most likely to be used for actual input and/or output images. Doing so minimizes the magnitudes of the colorimetric transformations required to account for the appearance factors involved.

The encoding reference viewing conditions for the systems described here were chosen to be consistent with those typical of indoor viewing of reflection prints. In most respects, the conditions are also consistent ...