Digital Color Management: Encoding Solutions, 2nd Edition

24

Closing Thoughts and Conclusions

In the first edition of this book, published in January 1998, we offered the following assessment of the state of color management in the color-imaging industry:

At the time of this writing, there is not yet an agreed-upon method for interchanging color images among different types of imaging systems. However, there has been a great deal of progress in that direction. Also encouraging is the fact that many of the technical problems discussed in this book are becoming more generally acknowledged and understood.

In particular, there is growing acceptance of the two principal issues that were addressed: first, that digital color encoding involves much more than standard colorimetry; and second, that there is more to successful color interchange than the use of standard file formats and data metrics. There also is a much greater understanding of the need for appearance-based colorimetry, and the need to provide various input-encoding and output-rendering options is gradually becoming more recognized.

Unfortunately, many problems remain. There still are misconceptions regarding the roles of color encoding specifications and color interchange specifications in color communication. There is confusion regarding the concept of encoding reference viewing conditions and the distinction between encoding reference conditions and actual input/output conditions. There also is confusion regarding specific concepts related to reference viewing conditions, ...