Digital Photography and Color Printing

Abstract

Digital photography is a new electronic still imaging system that has appeared in the process of the electronization of photography. It is a fusion of electronic photography and hybrid photography, combining film images and image data. The main frame of this system consists of image pickup, manipulation, and output processes. In the image pickup process, three-dimensional images of objects and two-dimensional film images are recorded by electronic still cameras and scanners, respectively. The image manipulation is digital signal processing using the computer. The image output processes include both hardcopy printing and softcopy display. Digital color printers are the key equipment for hardcopy output. Recent useful applications are electronic picture retouching in photographic studios and desktop publishing for graphics engineers. At present, many small digital cameras have appeared on the consumer market. They are designed to be three-dimensional scanners in the peripheral equipment of personal computers. The development of color non-impact printers producing color prints has succeeded in the early stages, and these technologies have expanded the applications of color hardcopy. Digital photography integrates various imaging equipment and yields new technical problems in image quality. This report reviews the progress of digital photography and its contribution to the development of the hardcopy world, then discusses new problems of data coding and matching in image quality of softcopy and hardcopy prodcopy produced by the same image data.