Accurate color reproduction for computer graphics applications

Abstract

A method is presented for accurate color reproduction among a wide variety of display devices. The method is very general, in that it may be applied to virtually any color display device. Its generality has been demonstrated by application to color monitors, film recorders, electronic pre-press systems and color hardcopy devices. The algorithm has been used to accurately translate between device dependent and device independent color specifications and to translate from one device dependent color specification to another.The method separates the color reproduction process into two distinct components: device characterization, which accounts for the colorimetric properties of each class of display device, and device calibration, which accounts for local variations from one instance of a device to another.A companded RGB color space is introduced, which is used with trivariate parametric polynomial volumes (i.e. hyperpatches) to perform accurate color transformations.A color separation algorithm is presented which converts companded RGB to and from the subtractive printing colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) using gray component replacement.