6th Color Imaging Conference

Scottsdale, Ariz., Nov. 17, 1998

Color in Desktop Computing: From Theory to Practice

The chain between RGB values used in application software and the luminance and chromaticity eventually displayed on the screen is long, convoluted, and poorly documented. This complexity frustrates scientists and engineers in their attempts to actually use digital color images with contemporary desktop computers and color devices. This tutorial bridges the gap between the theory of color science and its practice in contemporary desktop computer systems.

Benefits: Attendees of this tutorial will be able to:

• explain the representation of color image data in contemporary computing systems

• describe the flow of information through the desktop system from input to graphic files, into the application, through the graphics library, into the framebuffer or graphics card, through the lookup tables, across the physical interface, and out to color devices (such as monitors and printers)

• detail where tone scale and color transformations occur, and explain how to control them

• describe the tone and color responses of scanners, monitors, and various kinds of printers

• describe transfer function ("gamma"), white point, primary chromaticities, color mixing, dot gain, color separation (RGB to CMYK), color lookup tables, and tone reproduction curves of modern devices

• discuss the different treatments accorded to images by PCs, Macs, and UNIX workstations

• understand the color coding of TIFF, PICT, BMP, JPEG, GIF, video, QuickTime, PostScript, PDF, MPEG, and digital video files

Intended Audience: This tutorial is intended for engineers, scientists or others who are familiar with classical colorimetry, and have some experience with image capture and manipulation using desktop computers.

See also, Color in Digital Video: DTV, ATV and High Definition Television.

For registration details, see the Color Imaging Conference Tutorials page.

Charles Poynton - Courses & seminars
1998-07-17