Color Science

The commercialization of digital imaging products and the popularity of those products impacts manufacturers of digital cameras, film and print scanners, inkjet printers and electrophotographic printers, and a multitude of other digital input devices and digital output devices. Color science is an important discipline in industries such as digital printing and printer manufacturing, photo finishing, pharmaceutical, biomedical, medical imaging, remote sensing, surveying, astronomy, oceanography, and in many other areas of science.

TPR's color scientists have worked on many applications for customers in the above mentioned industries. Color science allows one to measure color and manipulate color with reference to the human visual system, which begins with a device (input or output) characterization step. Device characterization allows us to understand how a given device responds to colors (input) or creates colors from a known signal (output). Once the device has been characterized using as much of its signal range as possible, a model can be constructed to manipulate input signals and transform them into new signals that give the desired result. The organization or management of color reproduction among input, output, and intermediate display devices is known as "color management". Worldwide standards are being defined by the International Color Consortium (ICC) and utilized by imaging product manufacturers around the world. TPR has experience in creating standard and custom ICC Profiles for input devices, output devices, and monitors.

The measurement of color, which is termed colorimetry, creates the foundation from which color can be manipulated. Mathematical models pertaining to the human visual system allow us to compute approximations to perceived colors from raw spectral measurements and to define the colors numerically.

As industries respond to consumer demand for increasing color quality in most products, the importance of color science to the development of these products correspondingly increases. TPR has built deep in-house expertise to lead, or serve on, product development teams as required.

(Back to top)