Re: photogravures
Re: photogravures
- Subject: Re: photogravures
- From: Wire Moore <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 02:44:43 -0700
on 10/24/01 12:06 AM, David Wollmann at email@hidden wrote:
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Tom Lianza writes:
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> There seems to a consistent misunderstanding about metamerism that seems to
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> run through the ink jet industry and then get reinforced by some
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> contributers to this group.
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Curious, is there another word then that can be assigned to
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this? I noticed in C. David Tobie's response to my original
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post that he was putting "metamerism" in quotes, and from his
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other comments gathered that what I'm seeing does not fully
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meet the definition.
I've looked into this a bit. What I've found is that the word metamerism is
gaining popularity among digital imaging users, especially inkjet-printer
cognoscenti, to mean pretty close to the opposite to what it means in terms
of color theory.
WRT color theory, metamerism refers to metameric matches and metameric
pairs: A metameric match is the case of colored objects that appear to match
only under certain lighting conditions. A metameric pair is the case of two
illuminants with different spectra that appear the same. A somewhat more
general definition is the quality of color stimuli with differing spectral
power distributions having matching appearance.
WRT digital imaging, metamerism is a more of a meme. Inkjet printers
commonly produce prints that appear different depending on lighting
conditions. It's more of a problem for some printing systems than others.
Differences that are egregious, or which seem wildly unexpected or
unpredictable, especially such that may jeopardize business relationships,
are popular topics of conversation among inkjet printer users, and they
typically say metamerism to convey the general case of conditions or results
whereby a metameric match is desired or expected, but not obtained. This is
a mouthful, and there aren't any other strong candidates for a term, so I
can see why folks have taken to saying metamerism for short.
This colorsync list is used by people who are interested in color theory and
those interested in color for digital imaging products. Putting the word
metamerism in quotes is a way for someone with both interests to acknowledge
the ambiguity of the term without going into these details.
It's unusual to find the color theory definition of metamerism in
dictionaries. Typically, dictionaries provide only the biology definition:
the condition of a body divided into metameres. So who knows when the
digital imaging meme may become a common definition.
Wire Moore