Recent progress in quantifying colour reproduction quality

Quantifying the perceptual difference between original and reproduced (and inevitably modified) colour images is currently a key research challenge in the field of colour imaging. Such information can be extremely valuable for instance in the development of new equipment and algorithms for colour reproduction. While in many research areas it is common practice to obtain quantitative quality information by the use of perceptual tests, in which the judgments of several human observers are being collected and carefully analyzed statistically, this approach has serious limitations for practical use, in particular because of the time consumption. Motivated by this, and aided by the ever increasing available knowledge about the mechanisms of the human visual system, the quest for perceptual colour image quality metrics that can adequately predict human quality judgments of complex images, has been on for several decades. However, unfortunately, the ”holy grail” is yet to be found. This paper gives a selective presentation of recent research in this field. Aspects that are covered in particular include new models and metrics for full-reference colour image quality, and new frameworks and models quantifying quality in a printing workflow.