A cross polarization could be indispensable in certain applications when scanning and digitizing highly reflective materials or when certain applications couldn’t afford following the recommended imaging geometry 0<sup>0</sup>/45<sup>0</sup> | 45<sup>o</sup>/0<sup>o</sup> for some technical reasons. However, that puts very much color fidelity in question, to which extent a cross polarization may impact the source illuminant in the first place that is consequently impacting the color appearance during the imaging and the color correction procedures. In this research we show how certain cross polarization setups are adding a chroma tint to the light source, D50 in this study, causing by that undesirable color shift of the color of the light source. Consequently, a shift in its color correlated temperature moving, in worst case scenario, from ~5000K to ~4500K and resulting in an increased DE00 as a result of the added chroma when compared against a standard D50; nearly doubled in best case scenario and nearly tripled in worst case scenario.
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.