About
Abhay:
Abhay
Sharma received his B.S. in Imaging Sciences from the University
of Westminster, London, and a Ph.D. in Physics from King’s
College, University of London. He has worked as a Senior
Research Engineer with Fujifilm’s Colour & Imaging
Technology Research group in the UK. The author taught at
different institutions in the UK before leaving academia
to work in industry. The author worked in the Colour &
Imaging Technology research group at Fujifilm where he developed
systems for color management. In 2001 he moved from the
UK to the USA to join Western Michigan University as an
Associate Professor in color imaging.
contact:
abhay.sharma@wmich.edu |
Behind
Understanding Color Management:
Color
management deals with color reproducing in digital imaging.
With so many digital cameras and scanners around there is
a huge interest in color management; however, there are
very few books on the subject.
When I started teaching at Western Michigan University,
there was no text that covered in one place all the necessary
images and information to explain digital color imaging.
I was continuously referring to pages in one book for one
concept, directing students to a web site for another image,
and using vendors' booklets for other data. So I contacted
Jim Gish at Thomson Delmar Learning with the idea of writing
a book on color management. Jim was visiting a university
and spoke about this idea to his professor host. By total
coincidence the professor had been to a presentation I had
given a few days earlier and so was able to give Jim some
positive feedback. Jim signed me up and a year later we
have the book in print.
Blue car – gray car The book contains a number of
unique images. In Chapter 2, I wanted to explore the effect
of night-time street lighting by taking a picture of a blue
car in daylight and then at night time. I asked my class
if anybody had a blue car. A student named Josh said he
did, and we arranged for him to park the vehicle under a
streetlamp near his house. Early one morning I got there,
set up my tripod in the street and waited for the sun to
come up. I got the first picture and then returned later
that night to take the second picture. It turned out to
be an expensive photo shoot, but the results were so dramatic
that it was worth every penny. In fact the results were
so startling that I had to put a line in the text to explain
that these images were not altered in Photoshop, and that
this is the real effect of a night-time yellow street light
on a blue car. The reason we see this effect is because
daylight contains blue light that hits the car and reflects
back to our eye. The street light does not contain any blue
light so there is nothing to reflect back; thus, the car
is devoid of color, so it appears silver or grey. The point
being made is that the lighting conditions have a major
effect on perceived color. (Image uploaded to web site.)
- Abhay Sharma
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