Expanding Dimensionality in Cinema Color: Impacting Observer Metamerism through Multiprimary Display

Television and cinema display are both trending towards greater ranges and saturation of reproduced colors made possible by near-monochromatic RGB illumination technologies. Through current broadcast and digital cinema standards work, system designs employing laser light sources, narrow-band LED, quantum dots and others are being actively endorsed in promotion of Wide Color Gamut (WCG). Despite artistic benefits brought to creative content producers, spectrally selective excitations of naturally different human color response functions exacerbate variability of observer experience. An exaggerated variation in color-sensing is explicitly counter to the exhaustive controls and calibrations employed in modern motion picture pipelines. Further, singular standard observer summaries of human color vision such as found in the CIE’s 1931 and 1964 color matching functions and used extensively in motion picture color management are deficient in recognizing expected human vision variability. Many researchers have confirmed the magnitude of observer metamerism in color matching in both uniform colors and imagery but few have shown explicit color management with an aim of minimized difference in observer perception variability. This research shows that not only can observer metamerism influences be quantitatively predicted and confirmed psychophysically but that intentionally engineered multiprimary displays employing more than three primaries can offer increased color gamut with drastically improved consistency of experience. To this end, a seven-channel prototype display has been constructed based on observer metamerism models and color difference indices derived from the latest color vision demographic research. This display has been further proven in forced-choice paired comparison tests to deliver superior color matching to reference stimuli versus both contemporary standard RGB cinema projection and recently ratified standard laser projection across a large population of color-normal observers

Characterization and visualization of reflective properties of surfaces

Images play a vital role in several fields of natural science research, including biology, physics, astrophysics, and computer science. In the natural sciences, images are commonly used in measurements or documentation; such applications include images made with telescopes, optical microscopes, or electron microscopes. In the humanities, images also play an important role in research. In art history, for example, many different types of images, from photos of small objects to three-dimensional reconstructions of buildings, help art historians to develop theories, to discuss them with other scholars, and to document the current state of artworks, e.g. in the process of restoration. This is particularly useful if the object is not easily accessible, in which case a common solution is to work with photographs. Digital photography has simplified the process of visual representation, because digital images can be easily shared and made accessible. However, when it comes to more complex kinds of artworks like mosaics, these static and two-dimensional images are not able to reproduce the actual visual impression of the object. Similar considerations apply to a variety of other artifacts, such as early prints, books, parchments, and textiles. The challenge in the digitization of of these objects lies in their complex surface properties and reflection behavior. A promising way to solve those limitations is the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging. RTI is a set of computational photographic methods that capture a subject’s surface shape and color, making it possible to interactively re-light the subject from any direction by means of a mathematical model. The major drawback of RTI is the limitation of the applied mathematical model. Other drawbacks are the RTI imaging workflow and the fact that display of RTI requires a particular stand-alone application. In this thesis, the author developed a data-driven scientific approach to reproduce surfaces composed of lambertian and glossy materials using the RTI technique with as few parameters as possible. This new approach has been called eRTI (enhanced Reflection Transformation Imaging). Furthermore the hardware needed to acquire RTI and eRTI has been improved, by collaborating with a local Swiss firm to develop a novel solution for image acquisition. Lastly a web-based viewer has been developed, to render eRTI images in any standard web browser, even on most mobile devices. The qualities of eRTI have been tested using a novel approach that includes a quantitative and a qualitative method. The results show agreement between the techniques

Colour coded

This 300 word publication to be published by the Society of Dyers and Colourists (SDC) is a collection of the best papers from a 4-year European project that has considered colour from the perspective of both the arts and sciences.The notion of art and science and the crossovers between the two resulted in application and funding for cross disciplinary research to host a series of training events between 2006 and 2010 Marie Curie Conferences & Training Courses (SCF) Call Identifier: FP6-Mobility-4, Euros 532,363.80 CREATE – Colour Research for European Advanced Technology Employment. The research crossovers between the fields of art, science and technology was also a subject that was initiated through Bristol’s Festival if Ideas events in May 2009. The author coordinated and chaired an event during which the C.P Snow lecture “On Two Cultures’ (1959) was re-presented by Actor Simon Cook and then a lecture made by Raymond Tallis on the notion of the Polymath. The CREATE project has a worldwide impact for researchers, academics and scientists. Between January and October 2009, the site has received 221, 414 visits. The most popular route into the site is via the welcome page. The main groups of visitors originate in the UK (including Northern Ireland), Italy, France, Finland, Norway, Hungary, USA, Finland and Spain. A basic percentage breakdown of the traffic over ten months indicates: USA -15%; UK - 16%; Italy - 13%; France -12%; Hungary - 10%; Spain - 6%; Finland - 9%; Norway - 5%. The remaining approximate 14% of visitors are from other countries including Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany (approx 3%). A discussion group has been initiated by the author as part of the CREATE project to facilitate an ongoing dialogue between artists and scientists. http://createcolour.ning.com/group/artandscience www.create.uwe.ac.uk.Related papers to this research: A report on the CREATE Italian event: Colour in cultural heritage.C. Parraman, A. Rizzi, ‘Developing the CREATE network in Europe’, in Colour in Art, Design and Nature, Edinburgh, 24 October 2008.C. Parraman, “Mixing and describing colour”. CREATE (Training event 1), France, 2008

Thermal protection properties of aerogel-coated Kevlar woven fabrics

This paper investigated the thermal properties of aerogel-coated Kevlar fabrics under both the ambient temperature and high temperature with laser radiation. It is found that the aerogels combined with a Kevlar fabric contribute to a higher thermal insulation value. Under laser radiation with high temperature, the aerogel content plays a vital role on the surface temperature of the fabrics. At laser radiations with pixel time 330 μs, the surface temperatures of the aerogel coated Kevlar fabrics are 400-440°C lower than that of the uncoated fabric. Results also show that the fabric temperature is directly proportional to pixel time. It can be concluded that the Kevlar fabrics coated with silica aerogel provides better thermal protection under high temperature