CIECAM02

Abstract

In colorimetry, CIECAM02 is the color appearance model published in 2002 by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) Technical Committee 8-01 (Color Appearance Modelling for Color Management Systems) and the successor of CIECAM97s. The two major parts of the model are its chromatic adaptation transform, CIECAT02, and its equations for calculating mathematical correlates for the six technically defined dimensions of color appearance: brightness (luminance), lightness, colorfulness, chroma, saturation, and hue. Brightness is the subjective appearance of how bright an object appears given its surroundings and how it is illuminated. Lightness is the subjective appearance of how light a color appears to be. Colorfulness is the degree of difference between a color and grey. Chroma is the colorfulness relative to the brightness of another color that appears white under similar viewing conditions. This allows for the fact that a surface of a given chroma displays increasing colorfulness as the level of illumination increases. Saturation is the colorfulness of a color relative to its own brightness. Hue is the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow, the so-called unique hues. The colors that make up an object’s appearance are best described in terms of lightness and chroma when talking about the colors that make up the object’s surface, and in in terms of brightness, saturation and colorfulness when talking about the light that the emitted by or reflected off the object. CIECAM02 takes for its input the tristimulus values of the stimulus, the tristimulus values of an adapting white point, adapting background, and surround luminance information, and whether or not observers are discounting the illuminant (color constancy is in effect). The model can be used to predict these appearance attributes or, with forward and reverse implementations for distinct viewing conditions, to compute corresponding colors. CIECAM02 is used in Windows Vista's Windows Color System.