Novel scanner characterization method for color measurement and diagnostics applications

We propose a novel scanner characterization approach for applications requiring color measurement of hardcopy output in printer calibration, characterization, and diagnostic applications. It is assumed that a typical printed medium comprises the three basic colorants C, M, Y. The proposed method is particularly advantageous when additional colorants are used in the print (e.g. black (K)). A family of scanner characterization targets is constructed, each varying in C, M, Y and at a fixed level of K. A corresponding family of 3-D scanner characterizations is derived, one for each level of K. Each characterization maps scanner RGB to a colorimetric representation such as CIELAB, using standard characterization techniques. These are then combined into a single 4-D characterization mapping RGBK to CIELAB. A refinement of the technique improves performance significantly by using a function of the scanned values for K (e.g. the scanner’s green channel response to printed K) instead of the digital K value directly. This makes this new approach more robust with respect to variations in printed K over time. Secondly it enables, with a single scanner characterization, accurate color measurement of prints from different printers within the same family. Results show that the 4-D characterization technique can significantly outperform standard 3-D approaches especially in cases where the image being scanned is a patch target made up of unconstrained CMYK combinations. Thus the algorithm finds particular use in printer characterization and diagnostic applications. The method readily generalizes to printed media containing other (e.g “hifi”) colorants, and also to other image capture devices such as digital cameras.