Evaluation of the color-difference formulae for neutral colors

Abstract

In printing industry, the results of quality control of neutral prints are not consistent with the visual assessments. In order to solve this problem, 50 pairs of neutral color samples were prepared, and 29 observers with normal color vision were organized to carry out the color-difference experiments with the method of gray scale. In total, 1750 judgments were gathered. The visual results were used to test the performances of different color-difference formulae in terms of the standardized residual sum of square (STRESS) factor. The results indicate that the CIEDE2000 formulae have the best performance and all the tested formulae have the best performances for the evaluation of the color pairs only with the hue differences.