Measurement and Modeling of Vividness Perception and Observer Preference for Color Laser Printer Quality

The present article investigates a particular problem: how vividness can be calculated and used to evaluate printer quality Vividness is a term representing chromaticness of colors (conceptually similar to chroma) and has also been adopted as one of the color adjectives in Inter Society Color Council-National Bureau of Standards (ISCC-NBS) color naming and practical color coordinate (PCCS) systems. According to ISO 20462-2, a new psychophysical method (triplet comparison method) was performed. As a result, an interval scale for vividness was established, and it was modeled as a function of mean chroma, C-ab*, and lightness, L*, of printer primary and secondary colors. Pearson correlation between the metric prediction and corresponding subjective data was about 0.96. The methodology was further extended to measure observer preference (preferred-vividness). Both preferred-vividness and vividness metrics were based upon chroma and lightness, but the contribution of lightness is much higher in the former (similar to 40%) case than in the latter (similar to 10%). (c) 2010 Society for Imaging Science and Technology [DOI: 10.2352/J.ImagingSci.Technol.2010.54.1.010501]