FYI

A quick note that these are my personal notes from the course, Metamerism Expert’s Day 2024, organised by Charles Poynton, and therefore, you should double-check all the info with additional research and not rely on these notes as they are.

Course Introduction

In colour science, “metamerism” refers to two things: metameric success, where two different spectral distributions produce the same RGB values or evoke the same color sensation, and metameric failure, where the same spectral distribution produces different RGB triplets or evokes different color sensations. In high-end colour imaging we seek predictable colour sensations, so metamerism is an important issue in both engineering and production. Metamerism is especially relevant today with the widespread use of LEDs in both illumination and displays, where the rather narrow-band spectral power induces metamerism much more readily than in classic illumination and display technology.

In this session, we discuss the principle of metamerism – both good and bad! – and address practical issues relevant to modern video and film production, post-production, and presentation: illumination, cameras, displays, and atypical (“color deficient”) observers.

• Charles Poynton (Independent researcher, Toronto)
• Andrew Stockman (Professor of vision science, UCL, London)
• Adrian Bull (CEO, Cinelab, London)
• Bram Desmet (CEO/display expert, Flanders Scientific, Atlanta)
• John Frith (imaging engineer, MPC/Technicolor, London)
• Jean-Philippe Jacquemin (Product manager HDR, Barco, Belgium)
• Laurens Orij (Senior colourist, Crabsalad, Amsterdam)
• Andy Rider (Research associate, UCL, London)
• Daniele Siragusano (Imaging engineer, Filmlight, London)

We will discuss illuminant metamerism and camera metamerism (relevant to camera acquisition in general, but particularly to LED illumination, LED walls, and virtual sets), and observer metamerism (ie deficient colour vision, an issue for LED-backlit-LCD, OLED, QD-OLED, and laser cinema, particularly if your producer has anomalous colour vision).

Course Topics

• Terminology; definition of metamerism
• Metamerism in context of the motion picture / video pipeline
• Colour vision I
• Camera metamerism, 3×3 CFM, ACES IDT
• Camera spectral response
• Colour vision II
• Observer metamerism, colour vision deficiency
• Display technology (LCD, LED, OLED, QD, DLP, laser)
• Metamerism in post-production
• Metamerism in laser cinema
• Metamerism experiments
• Metamerism in studio reference displays

Sketchbook Notes