Using Image Quality Metrics to Evaluate an ICC Printer Profile

The increased interest in color management has resulted in more options for the user to choose between for their color management needs. Evaluating the quality of each of these color management packages is a challenging and time-consuming task. We propose an evaluation using image quality metrics to assess the quality of a printer profile. This will determine the best solution for a given set of objectives. The goal of this work is to create a thorough evaluation for a printer profile to determine the most appropriate profile without using observers. A printer profile has several aspects that can be evaluated separately: colorimetric accuracy, invertibility, grayscale reproduction, perceptual image quality, smoothness and gamut mapping . In this paper we look for a solution for applying image quality metrics to evaluate the different aspects of ICC printer profiles. The aim of this research is to reduce the amount of time required to compare the overall quality of ICC profiles and give a more thorough evaluation than is typically done by subjectively evaluating each aspect of the printer profile individually.