Personal insights on color science

Context
In a previous post I talked about the last event in my field I did attend. Now I want to talk about my perception of this domain which is called color science. I'm pretty sure it can be applied to other fields of research as well.

From the first time I joined this community, from article reader, article contributor to reviewer, committee member and session chair my understanding of what is color science has evolved. One important thing is to stay humble, especially with the new comers. I have been one them, it was impressive. Impressive because you meet the people, authors of research articles that are part of the foundation of you work. You can add a person, a voice to written words, it's actually pretty cool.

There aren't thousand concepts to understand/enter the world of color science. Like in every fields it's about observation and trying to explain what's happening. But here it's all about light - its spectral properties - how we perceive this signal - a single light source to an image in the visible spectrum - and how can we develop robust scientific/engineering "stuffs" around it. What I find interesting is to witness what is the new thing coming each year, how a technical improvement can open a door for further applications.

Color trends
Among the research sub-fields presented at CIC this year I want to come back on four of them.

There is the recurrent discussion about color metrics, from a purely mathematical/geometrical approach to a more perception-wise approach trying to add an average human appreciation of the difference between two signals. Having a good metric is always helpful to evaluate your algorithm/experiment. Over the years the metrics are evolving, context is important (from display calibration to color textile differences...).

There is the what I call "purely geometrical approach" discussion where having a signal as vector of n values - for n wavelength -  a group of sensors - basic configuration made of three basis like RGB basis - you want to know the value of this signal once projected on the known basis/sensors. From that you can jump into optimization, addressing various problems such as finding the scene illuminant/white point, study metamerism. It seems obvious but it's not.

There is printing and 3D printing - there I meant color 3D printing. Just think of how to design a color test-chart for such printing system. HDR display is also coming stronger than ever. What is interesting with these two examples is that they both require to know your workflow, they are the "end" of a process chain: you need to understand the acquisition process to do a good reproduction. Understanding the use of the technology is obviously required.

On the last paragraph one can add the understanding of gamut mapping and how you "move" into your color space as something very important. For printers you have multi-inks system changing the shape of the color space available. For high resolution TV and HDR screen the color gamut shape may not change a lot - almost - but the variability of screen size, intensity scale, technology available make it difficult - to be understood as something cool and challenging for me - to offer a comfortable experience to the user among the different platforms.

Now that I'm a bit more in control with the tools/concepts in my field and sub-fields I have the tendency to prefer the projects combining several concepts - like high quality printing and movie post-production - and I always appreciate to hear how the authors are presenting their projects, which story they are telling us.

CIC visiting Darmstadt

What is CIC you may ask yourself? It's stand for Color Imaging Conference, a conference about color and imaging. This year it took place in Darmstadt DE. The last 22 editions always took place in the US, last year it was in Boston MA, two years ago in Albuquerque NM, three years ago in Los Angeles CA, four years ago in San Antonio TX and that's it for my involvement. Next stop is San Diego CA in November 2016.

I'm a regular attendee, I joined this community already ten years ago alternating between CGIV, AIC, EI and CIC. Depending of the event you will meet a slightly different crowd or so to say different crowds will meet allowing to go deeper in the various fields represented. But for sure it's about imaging, color, perception, printing, archiving, image acquisition, color management, camera and display calibration, gamut mapping and more.

This year almost 200 persons were attending the event in Darmstadt. There is a kind of routine in such event and being part of the committee allows you to see the people interaction with a special look. It's very special to see the attendees - former colleagues, friends, known members of this community - arriving from everywhere almost - from North America, Europe, Asia, Australia... - and being all jet-lagged. Even if you are traveling in the same time zone you will end up jet-lagged. First of all the schedule is tide and you have to use the "free" time to talk with everybody. Sharing a meal or a beer is usually very appropriate. As a result you barely have time to rest, but the kind of adrenaline you get from meeting the crème de la crème of the color scientists keeps you awake.

PR stuffs

I joined yesterday evening another Meetup hosted by Bayer in Berlin. A master class about PR in the digital age given by Andreas Winiarski from RCKT & Rocket Internet. 

Why attending this event you may ask? First of all I heard about of the mini burgers legend that are possibly served during the Meetup organized at this location... No burgers this time but mini flammkuchen, so that wasn't too bad. Secondly and more seriously I was curious to hear a PR person talking about his work and experience. I'm not one of them - I'm a data scientist with a liking for computer vision and color science - but in my work, at some point, I may have to communicate with the communicating people.

What I like about the talk was the way - it seems - this profession has changed putting the people more in control by taking control of the available tools: you are the first communicator. You don't need much of infrastructure to start spreading your voice as you are always two clicks away from starting a blog.

I also appreciate the position of the speaker - and I guess the one of the company he is representing - regarding where they want to go, what they want to achieve. The internet is not only reserved to the US or China. Germany and Europe have to be part the game. There is no local market, everything is global from the beginning and the model followed by Rocket Internet is completely going in that direction.

To be short that was a pretty interesting presentation. I can't say I learned many new things, but it's nice to see some of your thoughts formalized by others. It make you feel that you are not completely disconnected from the world.