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All color-difference formulas are developed to evaluate color differences for pairs of stimuli with hairline separation. In printing applications, however, color differences are frequently judged between a pair of samples with no separation (NS) because they are printed adjacently on the same piece of paper. A new formula, ΔE NS , has been developed for pairs of stimuli with NS. An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of different color-difference magnitudes using sample pairs with NS. 1012 printed pairs with NS were prepared around 11 CIE recommended color centers. The pairs, representing four color-difference magnitudes of 1, 2, 4, and 8 CIELAB units were visually evaluated by a panel of 19 observers using the gray-scale method. Comparison of the present data based on pairs with NS, and previously generated data using pairs with hairline separation, showed a clear separation effect. A new color-difference equation for the NS viewing condition (ΔE NS ) is proposed by modifying the CIEDE2000 formula. The separation effect can be well described by the new formula. For a sample pair with NS, when the CIEDE2000 color difference is less than 9.1, a larger color difference leads to a larger lightness difference, but has no effect on the chromatic difference. When the CIEDE2000 color difference is greater than 9.1, the effect is the opposite. The new formula is recommended for future research to evaluate its performance in appropriate applications.

The whiteness specification is critically important in surface color industry, especially when fluorescent whitening agents (FWAs) are added to objects. The CIE whiteness formula, the most widely used whiteness formula, only characterizes the whiteness under CIE standard D65, which ignores the change of whiteness under different light sources due to the spectral content of the light sources. Though the adoption of a Chromatic Adaptation Transform (CAT02) in the CIE whiteness formula was found effective in recent studies, it failed to allow a comparison across different correlated color temperatures (CCTs). In this study, a haploscopic viewing condition was employed, with a D65 simulator in the left booth, for evaluating the whiteness of eight samples under different light sources in the right booth. The whiteness of the four samples under the D65 simulator was employed as a whiteness scale to aid the evaluation. Based on the experiment results, the characterization of whiteness for a surface under an arbitrary light source is proposed to use the CIE whiteness formula with the sample chromaticities being transformed using CAT02 and an adjusted degree of chromatic adaptation factor D.

Memory colors generated continuous interest in the color community. Previous studies focused on reflecting color chips and color samples in real scenes or on monitors. The cognitive effect of culture was rarely considered. In this paper, we performed a comprehensive investigation of the long-term memory colors of 26 familiar objects using the asymmetric color matching method among Chinese and German observers on a display. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate the variations introduced by culture, context-based gray image, and initial matching color. Memory colors of important objects were collected and representative memory colors were quantified in terms of CIELAB L * , a * , and b * values. The intra- and inter-observer variations were analyzed by mean-color-difference-from-mean values and chromatic ellipses. The effects of different cultural groups and experimental settings were also shown.

Recent advances in bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) acquisitions have provided a novel approach for appearance measurement and analysis. In particular, since gloss appearance is dependent on the directional reflective properties of surfaces, it is reasonable to leverage the BRDF for gloss evaluation. In this paper, we investigate gloss appearance from both soft metrology and hard metrology. A psychophysical experiment was conducted for the gloss assessment of 47 neutral-color samples. In the evaluation of gloss perception from gloss meter measurements, we report several ambiguous correspondences in the medium gloss range. In order to analyze and explain this phenomenon, the BRDF was acquired and examined using a commercial BRDF measuring device. With an improved correlation-to-visual perception, we propose a two-dimensional gloss model by combining a parameter, the standard deviation of the specular lobe, from Ward's BRDF model with measured gloss values.

New values of parameters a and b are proposed for the CIE system of mesopic photometry MES2 [CIE Publication 191:2010], because from the original values this model may have no solution or multi-solutions. From the new values of parameters a and b it is shown that the CIE MES2 system has a unique solution. The difference however, between the original and the new values of parameters a and b is very small and the changes do not affect previous conclusions based on the MES2 model. To compute such a solution, we propose a Bisection-Newton method which exhibits fast convergence (8 iterations in the worst case), and improves the fixed-point method recommended by the CIE MES2 system, which has convergence problems for high values of the photopic luminance and very high values of the scotopic/photopic ratio. Comparative results for the fixed-point method, the Bisection method, the Newton method, and the Bisection-Newton method, in terms of the number of iterations necessary for convergence and the computation time used, are reported.

A perceptually uniform color space has been long desired for a wide range of imaging applications. Such a color space should be able to represent a color pixel in three unique and independent attributes (lightness, chroma, and hue). Such a space would be perceptually uniform over a wide gamut, linear in iso-hue directions, and can predict both small and large color differences as well as lightness in high dynamic range environments. It would also have minimum computational cost for real time or quasi-real time processing. Presently available color spaces are not able to achieve these goals satisfactorily and comprehensively. In this study, a uniform color space is proposed and its performance in predicting a wide range of experimental data is presented in comparison with the other state of the art color spaces.

Whiteness is an important colorimetric characteristic for surface colors. Currently, the CIE whiteness formula is widely used to characterize the whiteness of a surface in industry, whose limitations have been well documented. In this study, the whiteness appearance of 55 textile samples [43 non-fluorescent whitening agents (FWAs) and 12 FWA samples] were evaluated under six lighting conditions, comprising three levels of correlated color temperature (CCT) (i.e., 3000, 4000, and 6500 K) and two levels of UV radiation (i.e., zero and high), by 12 observers with normal color vision. The results indicated that the CIE whiteness formula with the CAT02 chromatic adaptation transform and the optimized CIE whiteness formula had the best performance in predicting the whiteness of surface colors, regardless of whether FWAs are contained, among the six formulas.