<p>In this dissertation, we propose four novel digital image processing algorithms. First, we discuss a novel digital halftoning algorithm that efficiently removes halftone artifacts commonly associated with error diffusion while adding only an insignificant computational cost. Second, we propose a novel gamut mapping algorithm that utilizes the entire printer gamut resulting in more saturated print results. Third, we propose two digital halftoning algorithms using deep neural networks that generate halftones with quality comparable to those generated with the direct binary search (DBS) algorithm. Lastly, we propose a descreening algorithm based on generative adversarial networks (GAN) framework that generates images with realistic texture.</p>

This paper gives a brief overview on the published and accepted standards and methods for colour photography and print lightfastness measuring and evaluating. A comparison of selected valid standards and evaluation suggestions has been made. Sample sets was produced by various photographic processes and printing techniques. Identical sample sets were used in both long-term and accelerated ageing experiment. In this thesis, the degradation speed is expressed as a formal rate constant, which was calculated from the dependence of normalized gamut volume on the exposure dose. Photographs and prints were compared on calculated lifetime basis. A failure of reciprocity law was observed, which indicates a lower credibility of estimated lifetime predictions based on accelerated ageing.

Colour is an important source of information in the natural world. It can be used for distinguishing and identifying surfaces and objects and separating one region from another. For instance, flowers and grasses in a garden can be distinguished by their colours despite a change in illuminant. Intuitively, the identifiability of surfaces in a scene can be described by their volumes of colour gamuts. But is this approximation of the identifiability accurate? On the other hand, the existence of metamerism in natural scenes shows that colour is sometimes unreliable for surfaces identification. Estimating frequency of metamerism normally requires many comparisons between surface colours to determine their distinguishability under different illuminants. Is there a simpler approach to predict the frequency of metamerism in natural scenes? The aim of this thesis was to address these two questions about the identifiability of surfaces in natural scenes. To answer the first question, the volumes of colour gamuts were estimated over 50 natural scenes under different illuminants. The logarithm of the gamut volume was regressed on the differential entropy of colours. It was found that gamut volume can be an accurate approximation, given a colour difference threshold representing the visual distinguishability within an approximately perceptually uniform colour space. To answer the second question, the frequency of metamerism was estimated over 50 natural scenes with changes in illuminant; and predictive models were constructed based on different combinations of Shannon differential entropies of colours. There was strong dependence of the frequency of metamerism on the combination of the differential entropy and the conditional differential entropy of colours. It means that the frequency of metamerism can be predicted by the informational quantities of the colours in a scene.

Inkjet printing technology became a popular technology for printing digital photographs in the last decade. There is a big variety of both original and alternative (cheaper) inks and print media for the consumers. But there is a question if the cheaper material provides also comparable printout quality. For this reason, it is important to test the properties of such inkjet printouts. There are several ways how to test the lightfastness of the printouts: long term storage under environmental conditions, or short, accelerated ageing tests. The stability of printouts is affected by many factors, such as ink-receiving layer, ink composition, UV and visible light intensity and air pollutants concentration in the environment. Some inkjet printouts exposed to light usually undergo surprisingly fast fading, but light is not the only dangerous condition for inkjet printout. The two types of test targets printed with dyebased inkjet inks on various paper types were subjected to both accelerated test in a xenon test chamber and light and environmental pollutants long-term test in a sunny indoor corridor. The values of light intensity were continuously monitored and samples properties were regularly measured with a spectrophotometer. Another type of testing included accelerated ozone ageing of inkjet dyes. The colour gamuts and gamut volumes were calculated from collected spectral data. Total colour difference E*ab was also evaluated, its increase served as a tool for finding the formal printout degradation rate constant. It was found out that the dyes in ink-receiving layers of printouts underwent significant degradation in all tested conditions. The degradation rate depended on the type of used print media. The reciprocity behaviour of printouts was also studied. Recent inkjet printouts testing miss some actual ISO norm which should show the way of effective lightfastness evaluation. One of the main aims of this work was to find some new and alternative ways of inkjet printouts lightfastness evaluation. The method of printed inks concentration determination from the test charts spectrophotometric measurements was also proposed.

Ces dernières années, les technologies d’écran se sont considérablement améliorées. Par exemple, le contraste des écrans à plage dynamique élevée (HDR) dépasse de loin la capacité d’un écran conventionnel. De plus, un écran à gamut de couleur étendu (WCG) peut couvrir un espace colorimétrique plus grand que jamais. L'évaluation de la qualité de ces nouveaux contenus est devenue un domaine de recherche actif, les métriques de qualité SDR classiques n'étant pas adaptées. Cependant, les études les plus récentes négligent souvent une caractéristique importante: les chrominances. En effet, les bases de données existantes contiennent des images HDR avec un gamut de couleur standard, négligeant ainsi l’augmentation de l’espace colorimétrique due au WCG et les artefacts chromatiques. La plupart des mesures de qualité HDR objectives non plus ne prennent pas en compte ces artefacts. Pour surmonter cette problématique, dans cette thèse, nous proposons deux nouvelles bases de données HDR/WCG annotés avec des scores subjectifs présentant des artefacts chromatique réaliste. En utilisant ces bases de données, nous explorons trois solutions pour créer des métriques HDR/WCG: l'adaptation des métrics de qualité SDR, l’extension colorimétrique d’une métrique HDR connue appelée HDR-VDP-2 et, enfin, la fusion de diverses métriques de qualité et de features colorimétriques. Cette dernière métrique présente de très bonnes performances pour prédire la qualité tout en étant sensible aux distorsions chromatiques. / To improve their ability to display astonishing images, screen technologies have been greatly evolving. For example, the contrast of high dynamic range rendering systems far exceed the capacity of a conventional display. Moreover, a Wide Color gamut display can cover a bigger color space than ever. Assessing the quality of these new content has become an active field of research as classical SDR quality metrics are not adapted. However, state-of-the-art studies often neglect one important image characteristics: chrominances. Indeed, previous databases contain HDR images with a standard gamut thus neglecting the increase of color space due to WCG. Due to their gamut, these databases are less prone to contain chromatic artifacts than WCG content. Moreover, most existing HDR objective quality metrics only consider luminance and are not considering chromatic artifacts. To overcome this problematic, in this thesis, we have created two HDR / WCG databases with annotated subjective scores. We focus on the creation of a realistic chromatic artifacts that can arise during compression. In addition, using these databases, we explore three solutions to create HDR / WCG metrics. First, we propose a method to adapt SDR metrics to HDR / WCG content. Then, we proposed an extension of a well-known HDR metric called HDR-VDP-2. Finally, we create a new metric based on the merger of various quality metric and color features. This last metric presents very good performance to predict quality while being sensitive to chromatic distortion.

FM halftoning is increasingly popular with traditional analog offset lithographic printing processes. There is a desire to offer this capability with digital presses based on electrophotographic printing (EP) technologies. However, the inherent instability of the EP process challenges the achievement of satisfactory print quality with dispersed-dot, aperiodic halftoning. The direct binary search (DBS) algorithm is widely considered to represent the gold standard of dispersed-dot, aperiodic halftone image quality. In this paper, we continue our previous efforts to adapt DBS to use with the Indigo liquid EP printing technology. We describe a complete color management pipeline for halftoning with a PARAWACS matrix designed using DBS. For the first time, we show actual printed patches obtained using our process. Our gamut mapping is performed in the YyCxCz color space, and is image-dependent. It incorporates several stages of alignment between the input and output spaces, as well as several stages of compression. After the gamut mapping, we tessellate the output color space into six global tetrahedra that each share the neutral axis, as an edge. Then, we determine the Neugebauer Primary Area Coverage (NPAC) for each pixel in the image to be printed by tetrahedral interpolation from the four nearest neighbors in the inverse printer mapping table. These four nearest neighbors are chosen so that only four Neugebauer primaries are used to render each pixel.

<p>What is meant with print quality, what makes people perceive the quality of an image in a certain way? An inquiry was made about what the parameters are that strongly affect the perception of digital printed images. </p><p>A subjective test and some measurements make the basis for the thesis. The goal was to find a tool to predict perceived image quality when investigating the connections between the subjective test and the measurements. </p><p>Some suitable images were chosen, with a variety of motifs. A test panel consisting of people that are used to observe image quality answered questions about the perception of the quality. Measurements were made on a special test form to get information about the six different printers used in the investigation. </p><p>One of the discoveries was made when two images with the same colorful motif were compared. The first image got a much higher grade for general quality than the second image, even though the second image was printed with a printer that had a larger color gamut. The reason of this is that the first image consists of more saturated colors, and the second image has more details. The human eye perceives the more saturated image to be better than the image with more details. Another discovery was the correlation between the perceived general quality of a colored image and the perceived color gamut. One conclusion was that a great difference between two calculated color gamuts resulted in a large difference in perception of the color gamuts. A discovery of an image with very few colors and many glossy surfaces was that print mottle and sharpness are strictly connected to the general quality.</p>

No description available.

This thesis seeks to gain a better understanding on operating characteristics of the three primary color light emitting diode (LED). By applying direct, pulse and sinusoidal currents with dimming function on red, green, and blue LEDs, respectively, the operating characteristics are investigated, including electrical characteristics and their effects on the light efficiency, spectral power distribution, chromaticity on each color LED and the resultant color gamut. The analysis reveals that the illumination characteristics intimately relate to the driving current. LEDs that are driven by pulse currents with pulse-width-modulation (PWM) dimming have less color shift than those driven by direct and sinusoidal currents with amplitude modulation dimming. However, the problematic color shifting is not acceptable when LEDs with pulse current are dimmed at a lower level. Based on the investigation results, a dimming scheme with PWM and pulse- amplitude-modulation (PAM) is proposed to correct the chromaticity and hence to improve the color gamut.

No description available.