Colour Difference Evaluation.docVIP

What are CIELAB colour differences? CIE 1976 (L* a* b*) colour space provides a three-dimensional representation for the perception of colour stimuli. If two points in space, representing two stimuli, are coincident then the colour difference between the two stimuli is zero. As the distance in space between two points (L*1, a*1, b*1 and L*2, a*2, b*2) increases it is reasonable to assume that the perceived colour difference between the stimuli that the two points represented increases accordingly. One measure of the difference in colour between two stimuli is therefore the Euclidean distance DE* between the two points in the three-dimensional space. How good are CIELAB colour differences? Unfortunately several evaluations of CIELAB have shown that ?E* is not a particularly good measure of the magnitude of the perceptual colour difference between two stimuli. The relatively poor ability of ?E* to predict the magnitude of perceptual colour differences has led to more complicated ways of computing a colour difference from the CIELAB coordinates of two samples and some of these measures have been shown to be more reliable than the simple ?E*. How do I get descriptive colour differences? The L* C*ab H*ab representation is useful if qualitative colour differences are required. Differences can be calculated thus: ?L* = L*t - L*s, ?C*= C*t - C*s ?H*= {(?a*)2 + (?b*)2 - (?C*)2}1/2 where the subscripts s and b refer to standard and trial respectively. If ?L* is positive the trial is lighter than the standard, but if ?L* is negative the trial is darker than the standard.If ?C* is positive the trial is stronger than the standard, but if ?C* is negative the trial is weaker than the standard. The hue descriptor is more difficult to determine: the radial direction in hue from the standard to the trial is used to give two hue descriptors (eg: redder/yellower): the descriptors are derived from the first two axes that are crossed in the a*-b* plane of colour space when movin