Visual validation of the appearance of chromatic objects rendered from spectrophotometric measurements

We validate a physically based and spectral rendering framework with improved color reproduction. With a recently developed model, we take into account both the colorimetric specifications of the rendering display as well as the spectral and angular characteristics of lighting and also the spectral reflectance of the objects. Therefore, it should provide much better color reproduction than those based on the common standard red, green, blue (sRGB) color space. In addition, it allows real-time rendering on modest hardware and displays. We evaluated the color reproduction of the new rendering framework by psychophysical tests using spectrophotometric measurements of 30 chromatic paint samples. They were rendered on an iPad display, as viewed inside the Byko-spectra effect light booth. We asked 16 observers to evaluate the color match by directly comparing the rendered samples with the physical samples, using two different psychophysical assessment methods. The color reproduction was found to be strongly improved with respect to results obtained with default sRGB color encoding space. The average color reproduction match was found to be equivalent to ΔE₀₀=1.6, which is a small but noticeable color difference. In 80% of the visual assessments, the color reproduction was described as being at least as good as between "difference visible but still acceptable" and "difference visible, doubtful match."