On the uniform sampling of CIELAB color space and the number of discernible colors

Abstract

This paper presents a useful algorithmic strategy to sample uniformly the CIELAB color space based on close packed hexagonal grid. This sampling scheme has been used successfully in different research works from computational color science to color image processing. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance and the accuracy of the hexagonal grid sampling method applied to the CIELAB color space. The second objective of this paper is to show that the number of color samples computed depends on the application and on the color gamut boundary considered. As demonstration, we use this sampling to support a discussion on the number of discernible colors related to a JND. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.