To Predictability and Beyond: 20 years of Color Printing at CIC

Color printing has been a key topic at CIC since its kick-off in 1993 and is still well represented today. This invited talk will provide an overview of the variety of print-related work presented at this conference over the last 19 years and will give some thought to future direction. The material shown in print here is only a brief summary of the talk and the interested reader is advised to look for a copy of the slides after the conference at the following address: http://www.slideshare.net/jmorovic/ Color printing at the CIC Of the 1240 papers that will have been presented at the CIC by the end of this year’s conference, 313 are print–related (Figure 1), which represents between a third and a fifth of papers presented in any one year. Figure 1. Print–related papers as a proportion of all CIC papers. Beyond looking just at how much of the CIC’s attention has been aimed at printing, let us also take a closer look at what aspects of it were presented and discussed during the first 20 CICs (Figure 2). Figure 2. Topics addressed by print–related papers. About a quarter of all print-related papers were concerned with predicting color or spectral properties of print colorant overprints and/or their halftoned patterns, which is at the basis of using printers in color reproduction, of keeping printers calibrated and of making choices when designing printing systems. In essence all the effort in this area aims to provide predictability of printed color without the need to print and measure. Since the interactions among colorants and with a substrate (which can range from traditional paper-like ones to plastics, textiles and even ceramics) are so complex and dependent on the specifics of the materials involved, were are still not in a position where an arbitrary printing systems could be easily and accurately characterized. Another quarter of papers was concerned with what I call ‘workflows,’ which encompasses such topics as color management, color reproduction, spectral reproduction and the enabling of specialists applications (e.g., print verification, encryption of data in print, etc.). This topic was the most dominant one during the early years of CIC, but has maintained good representation throughout the last 19 years. As other parts of the color and imaging ecosystem change, so too do its interactions with print and so does the challenge of re-targeting and repurposing content meant for one medium for another. The next most popular aspect of dealing with print has been that of adjusting original/source color content to fit the range of colors that print is capable of generating – i.e., color gamut mapping. This topic has been particularly strong during the first 10 years of CIC, but has had peaks more recently too. One of the reasons for its popularity and recent resurgence is that no universally successful solution exists for this problem and that whenever progress is made elsewhere (e.g., image difference prediction, print quality evaluation), attempts are made to roll it back here. The last of the larger areas of focus is that of evaluating print – either by itself and as a function of its constituent materials or in the context of it being the reproduction of other color content. This is a topic that has seen particular growth in recent years and I believe has strong potential to keep our attention in the coming years. The better our understanding of what a given print’s properties are, the better a chance we have to adjust them to an optimal state. The remaining 20 per cent of papers have addressed various color processing algorithms relevant to print (e.g., more efficient, accurate or faster interpolation algorithms), have presented solutions to color halftoning, have introduced new printing hardware and materials or have been about tools that could be used to better understand print attributes or the workflows that have lead to them. During the talk I will pick out my favorite print-related papers from the last 19 CICs and try to give a flavor of how things have 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 P ap er s Year Print–related papers (313 total) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 P rin t-r el at ed p ap er s