What is color imaging science?

Color imaging science is the study of the formation, manipulation, display, and evaluation of color images. Image formation includes the optical imaging process and the image sensing and recording processes. The manipulation of images is most easily done through computers in digital form or electronic circuits in analog form. Conventional image manipulation in darkrooms accounts only for a very small fraction of the total images manipulated daily. The display of color images can use many different media, such as CRT monitors, photographic prints, half-tone printing, and thermal dye-transfer prints, etc. The complete imaging chain from capture, through image processing, to display involves many steps of degradation, correction, enhancement, and compromise. The quality of the final reproduced images has to be evaluated by the very subjective human observers. Sometimes, the evaluation process can be automated with a few objectively computable, quantitative measurements.

The complexity of color imaging science stems from the need to understand many diverse fields of engineering, optics, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Although it is not required for us to be familiar with every part of the process in detail before we can work in and contribute to the color imaging science field, it is often necessary for us to have a general understanding of the entire imaging chain in order to avoid making unrealistic assumptions in our work. For example, in digital image processing, a frequently used technique is histogram-equalization enhancement, in which an input image is mapped through a tonal transformation curve such that the output image has a uniformly distributed histogram of image values.