Perceptually uniform cross-gamut mapping between surface colors.

Abstract

Gamut mapping is an important part of the color reproduction pipeline. A color's appearance depends on the gamut achievable by the reproduction device (e.g., display, printer, etc.) or the reproduction material (e.g., plastics, paints, textiles, etc.). In the surface color industry, often a single color is managed such that, if it lies outside of the reproduction gamut, it would be mapped to a visually similar color on the boundary of the reproduction gamut using a gamut mapping algorithm. The algorithm's performance mainly depends on the uniformity of the working color space and/or selection of a focal point, inside the reproduction gamut, towards which the mapping line should be directed. Hitherto, the CIE standard color difference formula CIEDE2000 is the best known perceptual color difference metric for the standard dynamic range. In this paper, a method is proposed with the aim to achieve perceptually uniform mapping of a source color to the reproduction gamut using the CIEDE2000 as reference for uniformity. The proposed method, named UNIMAP00, is independent of the uniformity of the working color space, and no focal points are needed. The current results closely agreed with the experimental findings previously reported by other researchers.