The use of polarization while trying to keep the digital color reproduction accuracy at its finest is very challenging due to how polarization is interacting and affecting the light spectrum itself and due to the quality of the used polarization materials. Our study on RGB imaging and color reproduction’s fidelity with and without polarization shows that a cross circular polarization (on a camera lens and light source) will have a major impact on how a linear grayscale, whether it has a semi-glossy or matt finishing, would be reproduced in contrast to no polarization at all. A major loss in deep black shades in the case of a semi-glossy grayscale is unmistakable. In addition to a noticeable shift in both lightness and Chroma components regardless of the grayscale’s finishing but depending rather on the used color target for correction. DE00 could not paint the full picture about color fidelity despite its low conformant reported values. Whereas, a closer visual inspection of the color components separately (lightness and Chroma) reveals color reproduction problems caused by polarization.
To reproduce colors in one system which differs from another system in terms of the color gamut, it is necessary to use a color gamut mapping process. This color gamut mapping is a method to translate a specific color from a medium (screen, digital camera, scanner, digital file, etc) into another system having a difference in gamut volume. There are different rendering intent options defined by the International Color Consortium [5] to use the different reproduction goals of the user [19]. Any rendering intent used to reproduce colors, includes profile engine decisions to do it, i.e. looking for color accuracy, vivid colors or pleasing reproduction of images. Using the same decisions on different profile engines, the final visual output can look different (more than one Just Noticeable Difference[16]) depending on the profile engine used and the color algorithms that they implement. Profile performance substantially depends on the profiler engine used to create them. Different profilers provide the user with varying levels of liberty to design a profile for their color management needs and preference. The motivation of this study is to rank the performance of various market leading profiler engines on the basis of different metrics designed specifically to report the performance of particular aspects of these profiles. The study helped us take valuable decisions regarding profile performance without any visual assessment to decide on the best profiler engine.