Development and measurement of the goodness of test images for visual print quality evaluation

Abstract

The aim of the study was to develop a test image for print quality evaluation to improve the current state of the art in testing the quality of digital printing. The image presented by the authors in EI09 portrayed a breakfast scene, the content of which could roughly be divided in four object categories: a woman, a table with objects, a landscape picture and a gray wall. The image was considered to have four main areas of improvement: the busyness of the image, the control of the color world, the salience of the object categories, and the naturalness of the event and the setting. To improve the first image, another test image was developed. Whereas several aspects were improved, the shortcomings of the new image found by visual testing and self-report were in the same four areas. To combine the insights of the two test images and to avoid their pitfalls, a third image was developed. The goodness of the three test images was measured in subjective tests. The third test image was found to address efficiently three of the four improvement areas, only the salience of the objects left a bit to be desired.