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root/radiance/ray/doc/man/man1/macbethcal.1
Revision: 1.3
Committed: Thu Jan 1 19:31:45 2004 UTC (20 years, 4 months ago) by greg
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rad3R7P2, rad3R7P1, rad3R6, rad3R6P1, rad3R8
Changes since 1.2: +2 -2 lines
Log Message:
Renamed rview, lam, calc, and neat to rvu, rlam, icalc, and neaten

File Contents

# Content
1 .\" RCSid "$Id: macbethcal.1,v 1.2 2003/12/09 15:59:06 greg Exp $"
2 .TH MACBETHCAL 1 1/16/97 RADIANCE
3 .SH NAME
4 macbethcal - compute color compensation based on measured Macbeth chart
5 .SH SYNOPSIS
6 .B macbethcal
7 [
8 .B "\-d debug.pic"
9 ][
10 .B "\-p xul yul xur yur xll yll xlr ylr"
11 ]
12 .B scannedin.pic
13 [
14 .B calibout.cal
15 ]
16 .br
17 .B macbethcal
18 .B \-c
19 [
20 .B "\-d debug.pic"
21 ]
22 [
23 .B measured.xyY
24 [
25 .B calibout.cal
26 ]
27 ]
28 .SH DESCRIPTION
29 .I Macbethcal
30 takes a scanned image or measurement set
31 of a Macbeth ColorChecker\u\s-3TM\s+3\d color
32 rendition chart and computes a color mapping
33 function suitable as input to
34 .I pcomb(1).
35 .PP
36 In the first form,
37 .I macbethcal
38 takes a scanned image of a Macbeth chart that has been converted
39 into a Radiance picture using a fixed procedure.
40 When used properly as input to
41 .I pcomb,
42 the computed calibration file will adjust the
43 brightness and color of any similarly scanned and converted image
44 so as to best match the original.
45 If the lighting conditions are carefully controlled (as in the case
46 of a flatbed scanner), it is even possible to get reliable
47 reflectance values this way, at least within 10% or so.
48 The input picture is named on the command line.
49 The output calibration file will be written to the standard output
50 if no file name is given on the command line.
51 .PP
52 In the second form, the input is from a file containing measured
53 values for each Macbeth color.
54 This file must contain entries of the form:
55 .sp
56 .nf
57 N x y Y
58 .fi
59 .sp
60 Where
61 .I N
62 is the number of the corresponding Macbeth color.
63 (See back of ColorChecker chart
64 for color names and indexing, but it basically starts from the upper
65 left with 1 and proceeds in English text order to the lower right,
66 which is 24.)
67 The values
68 .I x,
69 .I y
70 and
71 .I Y
72 are the 1931 CIE (x,y) chromaticity coordinates followed by the
73 luminance for that color, which can be in any units.
74 If a white value is known (i.e. maximum output level), then it may
75 be given as entry number 0.
76 The entries may be in any order, and comments may be included
77 delimited by a pound sign ('#') and continuing to the end of line.
78 It is recommended that measurements be done for all 24 colors,
79 but the only required entries are the 6 neutral values on the bottom
80 row of the chart.
81 .PP
82 Computing a mapping from measured colors is usually more convenient
83 when calibrating a particular output device.
84 This is accomplished by printing the picture
85 .I macbeth_spec.pic
86 (which may be found in the standard RADIANCE library directory in
87 the lib subdirectory) and measuring the output with a chroma meter
88 or spectrophotometer.
89 .PP
90 For a scanned image, the locations of the 24 Macbeth patches
91 in the input picture must be known.
92 If the chart borders are not at the edges of the input picture, or
93 the chart has been reversed or rotated or is uncentered or at an
94 oblique angle, then it is necessary to specify the pixel locations
95 of the corners of the chart with the
96 .I \-p
97 option.
98 The corner postions (x,y pixel addresses as given by the
99 .I ximage(1)
100 "p" command)
101 are ordered on the command line:
102 upper-left, upper-right, lower-left, lower-right
103 (i.e. English text ordering).
104 These coordinates should be the outside corner positions of
105 the following patches:
106 .sp
107 .nf
108 upper-left = 1. dark skin
109 upper-right = 6. bluish green
110 lower-left = 19. white
111 lower-right = 24. black
112 .fi
113 .sp
114 If the chart has been flipped or rotated, simply give the pixel
115 positions of the appropriate patch corners, wherever
116 they are in the image.
117 (Note: if the Radiance picture has been flipped or rotated with
118 .I pflip(1)
119 or
120 .I protate(1),
121 .I ximage
122 will report the original pixel positions if the
123 .I \-c
124 option was not used by the reorienting program(s).
125 This will be wrong, so be sure to use the
126 .I \-c
127 option.)
128 .I Macbethcal
129 can handle a chart with any orientation or perspective warping if
130 the corner coordinates are given correctly.
131 The debug picture output is the best way to check for consistency.
132 (See the
133 .I \-d
134 option, below.)
135 .PP
136 The
137 .I \-d
138 option may be used to specify an additional output file, which will
139 be a picture comparing the scanned image processed according to the
140 computed mapping against the standard Macbeth colors.
141 It is a good idea to use the debug option to check that the color
142 patches are being located correctly, and to see how well
143 .I macbethcal
144 does at matching colors.
145 The center of each patch will show the target color;
146 the left side of each patch will show the original
147 color, and the right side will show the corrected value.
148 If the match works well, the debug picture should have a sort of
149 "notch on the left" look in each patch.
150 Macbeth colors that could not be matched because they were out of
151 gamut on this device are indicated with diagonal lines drawn
152 through the associated target colors.
153 .SH METHOD
154 .I Macbethcal
155 computes the color mapping in two stages.
156 The first stage uses the six neutral color patches at the bottom of
157 the Macbeth chart to compute a piecewise linear approximation to the
158 brightness mapping of each RGB primary.
159 The second stage looks at all the colors that are within the
160 device's gamut to compute a
161 least-sqaures fit for a linear color transformation from the
162 measured space into the standard Radiance RGB space (as defined by
163 the three primaries in src/common/color.h).
164 .PP
165 Thanks to the nature of inverse mappings, this method should work
166 either for converting scanned data to match the original, or for
167 preconditioning pictures to be sent to specific output devices.
168 In other words, the same calibration file works either for
169 correcting scanned images OR precorrecting images before printing.
170 .PP
171 A warning is printed if some unsaturated colors are determined to
172 be out of gamut, as this may indicate a poor rendition or improper
173 picture alignment.
174 The debug picture will show which colors were excluded by drawing
175 diagonal lines through their entries.
176 .SH NOTE
177 It is very important that the same settings be applied when
178 scanning or printing other images to be calibrated with the computed file.
179 In particular, all exposure adjustments should be fixed manually,
180 and no tweaking of the settings should be done along the way.
181 The final result will be best if the original scanned image is not
182 too far off from what it should be.
183 In the case of slide and negative scanners, it is best to apply the
184 recommended calibration file for the type of film used, so long as
185 this calibration is fixed and not adjusted on a per-image basis.
186 .SH CHART AVAILABILITY
187 The Macbeth chart is available at most photographic supply stores,
188 or may be ordered directly from Macbeth:
189 .sp
190 .nf
191 Macbeth
192 Munsell Color
193 405 Little Britain Rd.
194 New Windsor, NY 12553-6148
195 tel. 1-800-622-2384 (USA)
196 fax. 1-914-561-0267
197 .fi
198 .sp
199 The chart sells for under $50 US at the time of this writing.
200 .SH EXAMPLES
201 To compute a calibration for a FunkyThing scanner and check the
202 results:
203 .IP "" .2i
204 ra_tiff -r mbscan.tif mbscan.pic
205 .br
206 macbethcal -d debug.pic mbscan.pic FunkyThing.cal
207 .br
208 ximage debug.pic
209 .PP
210 To apply this computed calibration to another scanned image:
211 .IP "" .2i
212 ra_tiff -r another.tif | pcomb -f FunkyThing.cal - > another_calib.pic
213 .PP
214 To compute a calibration file for the BigWhiz film recorder, after
215 taking measurements of a slide made from macbeth_spec.pic:
216 .IP "" .2i
217 macbethcal -c macbeth_spec.xyY BigWhiz.cal
218 .PP
219 To prepare a picture prior to output on the same film recorder:
220 .IP "" .2i
221 pcomb -f BigWhiz.cal standard.pic > toprint.pic
222 .PP
223 To use
224 .I pcond(1)
225 to also adjust the image for human response:
226 .IP "" .2i
227 pcond -f BigWhiz.cal -h standard.pic > toprint.pic
228 .SH AUTHOR
229 Greg Ward
230 .br
231 Paul Heckbert supplied code for perspective projective mapping
232 .SH "SEE ALSO"
233 icalc(1), pcomb(1), pcond(1), pfilt(1), ximage(1)