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Color science is applied across the range of Kodak research activity -- from
the measurement of original colors to the prediction of how image-capture
devices and imaging systems will perform in the hands of picture takers. This
discipline studies the production, control, measurement, specification and
visual perception of color. Color science helps us analyze and quantify the
content of pictures and how we as human beings respond to these pictures in our
lives.
Colorimetry is one of the sub-disciplines within color science. It is used to
measure and quantify the initial visual response to a stimulus of light. These
measurements help enable color scientists to understand and predict how colors
are seen and how they may change under different types of conditions.
Color scientists at Kodak also delve into the factors that affect color
appearance and color preference. These include physical factors, such as image
illumination, image noise (grain or other image artifacts), spatial resolution
(sharpness) and temporal variations.
 Color
appearance is also affected by psychophysical factors, such as our
response to the perceived image brightness and to the specific conditions of the
image-viewing environment. An example of this is called lateral-brightness
adaptation. Here the eye perceives a lower luminance contrast when a dark
background immediately surrounds an image. In this example, the three gray
squares on the white background are physically identical to those on the black
background. But the luminance contrast of the series with the black background
appears to be lower. [Reproduced from Digital Color Management: Encoding
Solutions, E.J. Giorgianni and T.E. Madden © 1998
Eastman Kodak Company]
Research scientists also study the purely psychological aspects of how
people remember color and how they prefer colors to be reproduced. They
answer questions such as, "What do people expect from color pictures? Do
they want a vacation scene reproduced as closely as possible to the way the
human eye captured it? Or do they want the reproduction to represent colors as
they remember them? Do they instead prefer colors to be even brighter and more
vivid than those they remember?" Color scientists work closely with human
factors experts at Kodak to gather data on such issues in order to better
understand color and our physical, psychophysical, psychological response to it.
The principles of color science are applied across the spectrum of imaging
science research, and ultimately they are incorporated in all of Kodak's
electronic, photographic, and hybrid color-imaging systems. They are important
in studies related to visual system modeling, image processing, image simulation
and image understanding, as well as numerous other research areas dedicated to
the delivery of technologies for high-quality imaging products from Kodak.
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