About This Book

Thanks to Daniel_Li for recommending this book in our group chat.

I consider this a decent introductory text to color science. It systematically presents the framework and key concepts of color science with relatively concise content.

While it has several issues - including substantial “similarities” to Prof. Xu Haisong’s Color Information Engineering, some disorganized presentation sequences, and various minor problems - it remains one of the better textbooks and reference materials I’ve encountered in Chinese publications.

Title: Principles of Color Reproduction in Digital Images
Author: Gu Xiaojuan
ISBN: 978-7-115-61746-0

Study Plan

My approach involves:

  1. Summarizing key points from each chapter
  2. Reimplementing core algorithms with additional references
  3. Completing selected exercises

Using the abbreviation PCRDI (Principles of Color Reproduction in Digital Images) for these notes.

Table of Contents

The notes will follow the book’s chapter structure. Here’s a brief overview:

Light and Vision

Serves as an introduction covering fundamental concepts of light and vision, with particular emphasis on photometry.

Fundamentals of Colorimetry

Introduces color matching experiments and derives the CIE standard colorimetric system (tristimulus values, chromaticity coordinates, etc.). Briefly covers uniform color spaces and the Munsell system, leading to color difference formulas.

Illuminants and Light Sources

Examines common light sources in color science and evaluation methods, including CIE standard illuminants, color rendering indices, and light quality metrics.

Chromatic Adaptation and CATs

Building upon light sources and colorimetry basics, explains human chromatic adaptation phenomena and important chromatic adaptation transform models, laying groundwork for color appearance models.

Color Appearance Phenomena and Models

Since basic colorimetry cannot adequately describe subjective color perception, this chapter explores color appearance attributes, common phenomena, and several important color appearance models.

Color Measurement and Instruments

This surprisingly brief chapter spans just four pages As color science doesn’t heavily focus on measurement hardware (spectral separation techniques, sensor technology), it simply introduces common color measurement devices and their basic principles.

Color Reproduction

The ultimate goal of imaging workflows. This chapter applies previously discussed models and methods, introducing evaluation metrics and specialized concepts for color reproduction.

Color Processing in Digital Cameras

Details camera working principles, characterization methods, with particular focus on demosaicing and white balance algorithms.

Color Processing in Display Devices

Explains display technologies and color rendering pipelines, with detailed coverage of multi-primary color mixing methods.

Digital Color Management Systems

Presents color management systems (e.g., ICC, ACES) as comprehensive applications of all preceding content.