The success of any color-imaging system requires appropriate methods for representing, controlling, and communicating color. Numerous color-management methods claiming to provide "device-independent" color have not proven completely successful because their methods for digitally representing color have been inadequate, and the basic paradigms on which their color management is based have been too restrictive.

Understanding digital color management first requires understanding the nature of color itself, its measurement, and the properties of color-imaging media and systems. Despite the apparent complexity of such topics, however, all color imaging is based on straightforward but fundamental color science principles involving image capture, signal processing, image display, and visual perception. This tutorial will cover these principles and their application to successful color imaging and color management.

The color-management and color-representation methods used on several commercial color-imaging systems will be considered. Their strengths-and their modes of failure-will be explored. A novel color management paradigm based on a unique appearance-based color encoding, now the basis of the technology used by the International Color Consortium (ICC), will then be described. It will be shown that this paradigm offers a complete solution to the difficult problem of supporting disparate types of devices and media in a single system and provides for successful communication of color among systems of every kind. Numerous implementation examples will be shown, and practical methods for performing all required color-appearance transforms will be described.

Course Contents:

• The nature of color and the most important types of color measurement.
• The fundamental color-science principles underlying electronic, photographic, and hybrid color-imaging systems.
• Tone reproduction concepts such as dynamic range, latitude, flare, adaptation, viewing environment, and grayscale optimization.
• Color reproduction concepts such as image capture, color separation, color correction, matrixing, additive and subtractive color, color primaries, and color perception.
• Why images from various types of media differ fundamentally in their basic color properties, and the impact these differences have on digital color management.
• The capabilities and limitations of the technologies used in various types of color-managed systems.
• The properties of a universal color-management paradigm and how it can be translated to practical systems.
• How the universal paradigm can be implemented using color transforms consistent with specifications developed by the ICC.

Thomas Madden is a Research Associate and Group Leader in the Imaging Research and Advanced Development Division at Eastman Kodak Company. He has extensive experience designing photographic, electronic and hybrid color-imaging systems and holds numerous patents in the fields of color management and imaging technology. Among his inventions are the digital color-encoding methods used on many commercial imaging systems including the Photo CD system. He is co-author of the recent textbook, Digital Color Management: Encoding Solutions and a contributing author of Color for Science, Art, and Technology and the upcoming CRC Handbook of Digital Imaging. He is an award-winning instructor and has contributed to numerous technical symposia and publications.