AIC Color '01, Proc. 9th International Congress of the AIC, SPIE Vol. 4421-22, 24 29 June 2001, Rochester, USA.

1. Trends in color
imaging on the
Internet
Giordano Beretta
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Robert Buckley
Xerox Architecture Center
www
AIC Color 2001, Rochester, NY

2. User expectations 2
• Many users access the Internet in the office on fast
workstations connected over fast links to the Internet
• Increasingly, private homes are equipped with fast
connections over DSL, cable modem, satellite, …
• At home users often have fast graphics controllers for
playing realistic computer games
• The latest video game machines are very powerful graphic
workstations
• Today’s peripherals have “photo quality” color
These user experiences set very high expectations for color
imaging on the Internet
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

3. Polarization of devices 3
The nomadic workforce
• The new generation grew up on video games & WWW
• Expect concise answers immediately on multiple media
• The new working world is mobile and wireless
• a comprehensive fast fiber optics network provides a global backbone
• the “last mile” is wireless
• computers are wearable
• An appropriate viewing device has not yet been invented
• the content will be electronic
• the viewing conditions will be unpredictable
• likely, a plethora of viewing devices will be in use
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

4. Problems raised by new trend 4
• How do we deal with unknown viewing conditions?
• How can we transmit images at very low bit rates?
• How can we retrieve images on the Internet?
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

5. LCD display technology 5
• Cost falling faster than cost of CRT
• Mainstream also on desktop
• Most implementations different from CRT
• white point not on Planckian Locus
• sigmoidal tone reproduction curve
• greenish blue
• More brands with graphic arts specs
• Characterization only slightly more
complex than CRT
• can apply ICC-based CMS
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

6. Appearance mode 6
• CRT is darker than surroundings
• perceived as object in field of view
• viewing conditions must be controlled
• color fidelity is important
• LCD is brighter than surroundings
• similar to illuminator viewing condition
• visual system adapts to white point, memory colors
• Consistency principle (Evans)
• reproduction of relation among colors more important than absolute
colorimetry
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

7. JPEG 2000 7
• Adds many features that allow Internet users to interact
with the compressed data in ways not supported by JPEG
• Achieves acceptable image quality at very low bit rates
• Wavelet based
• Can mimic foveation of human visual system
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

8. Image compressed with JPEG 8
0.125 bpp
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

9. Image compressed with JPEG 2000 9
0.125 bpp
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

10. JPEG codestream is packetized 10
• First few packets are such that you can decompress and
obtain an image with more quality in the ROI (face) than
in the periphery (surround)
• As more packets arrive, you obtain the data to produce
better quality in the surround, so that the entire image is
rendered at the same quality
• User can truncate the process anywhere in between
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

11. Image compressed with JPEG 2000 11
ROI coding (face)
equivalent to 0.125 bpp
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

12. Image compressed with JPEG 2000 12
ROI coding
equivalent to 0.25 bpp
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

13. Image compressed with JPEG 2000 13
ROI coding
equivalent to 0.5 bpp
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

14. Image compressed with JPEG 2000 14
ROI coding
equivalent to 1 bpp
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

15. Image compressed with JPEG 2000 15
ROI coding
equivalent to 2 bpp
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

16. Image compressed with JPEG 2000 16
ROI coding
equivalent to 4 bpp
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

17. Algorithms for ROI 17
• Human vision collects low resolution overview in the
retina’s periphery
• High resolution views in the fovea with each fixation as
the eye jumps from ROI to ROI under top-down control
ROIs 3K bytes
3K bytes 100K bytes
L. Stark and C. Privitera, U.C. Berkeley & eFovea
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

18. Image retrieval 18
• Text-based image retrieval: images are annotated and a
database management system is used to perform image
retrieval on the annotation
• drawback 1: labor required to manually annotate the images
• drawback 2: imprecision in the annotation process
• Content-based image retrieval systems (CBIRS) overcome
these problems by indexing the images according to their
visual content, such as color, texture, etc.
A goal in CBIR research is to design representations that
correlate well with the human visual system
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

19. Rendered images 19
• Stock photo agency images are rendered to a normalized
intent
• Typical consumer images are the raw output of digital
cameras or scanners
• Many CBIR algorithms rely on color histograms
• Need to specify when images are unrendered
• RIMM/ROMM RGB
• Need algorithms to perform automatic rendering
operation
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet

20. Conclusions 20
• At Color ‘97 in Kyoto we predicted the availability of
cheap processing and fast cheap Internet
• compared compression in the color domain to compression in the spatial
domain; file formats
• Today we see a trend towards bright LCD displays and
wireless devices
• color consistency more important than fidelity
• packetized low bit rate codestreams with ROI
• contents based image retrieval
• At Color ‘05 we will see
• image-capable handheld devices with wireless Internet
• world-wide dop-down image search & retrieval from handheld
• incredibly bright handheld displays based on OLED
R.R. Buckley & G.B. Beretta AIC Color 2001 Trends in color imaging on the Internet