A metameric match between display and print? [was: CMY Display coming?]
A metameric match between display and print? [was: CMY Display coming?]
- Subject: A metameric match between display and print? [was: CMY Display coming?]
- From: Marco Ugolini <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 09 May 2010 22:56:57 -0700
- Thread-topic: A metameric match between display and print? [was: CMY Display coming?]
In a message dated 5/9/10 8:11 PM, Roger Breton wrote:
> Marco,
>
> To me, the more similar colorants are, spectrally, the less metameric they
> need to be in order to obtain a good match.
Hi Roger.
Goes without saying -- a spectral match is always a PERFECT match, by
definition.
But that means using the very same sets of pigments/dyes, at the very least,
not to mention other components that affect the geometric qualities of the
specimen, like varnishing and so forth.
Also, however much the manufacturers like to call them "subtractive", the
fact remains that these filter would still operate on an EMISSIVE device.
(And by the same token, we should then similarly think that the existence of
RGB filters on current LCD or LED displays makes these into "subtractive"
devices too, which I would consider to be quite a stretch.)
> The ideal case is a spectral match, with two colors matching perfectly under
> all illuminants because the underlying colorants from which they're made are
> exactly alike. On the other hand, the less colorants are alike, in my mind,
> the more "metameric" the match becomes. I think that with inkjet proofs and
> press inks, the match will always be metameric.
No doubt. Necessarily so.
But I have a question: since a metameric match properly defined is that
between TWO reflective specimens under ONE same illuminant, how can we talk
about a "metameric match" between an image as it appears in a print and as
it appears on a monitor -- as there is no common illuminant in this
instance?
We could talk of a "visual match", but, unless we change the definition, how
is it "metameric" in the proper sense? (Of course, I am confining the
argument to ILLUMINANT metamerism here, excluding the other possible kinds
of metamerism.)
> In principles, the way I understand this, black ink was added historically to
> CMY to compensate for ink's departures from the ideal, the so-called block-dye
> behaviour, that each ink would absorb its theoretical part of the spectrum. In
> fairness, I don't know to what extent it is technologically possible or
> necessary to obtain such perfect behaviour with CMY filters in order to obtain
> a good reproduction.
I understand that point. But my argument is that if we should ever be able
to match on these displays a set of real-life CMY inks, along with their
real-life behavior (which would seem to be the point of the whole effort),
then we still wouldn't have a good way to generate proper blacks, since a
100C-100M-100Y mix of the chromatic inks by themselves is always imperfect
in real life, and produces a dark gray at best, if not brownish -- not the
deep, reasonably neutral blacks that we would expect in a well-made print.
Marco Ugolini
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