True Color in Real Time: The Challenge of Mobile Imaging 67
rocannon writes "A mobile phone with a color display and built-in camera - it's the quintessential info-imaging tool. But communicating accurate color at high-speed data rates and rendering color on displays that do not deliver even standard screen color rendition are still challenging. Kodak explains why photo and color science are as important as clock speeds and data rates in this expanding market."
Brave new pr0n (Score:2, Funny)
Superiority of Analog (Score:1)
Re:Superiority of Analog (Score:3, Interesting)
Digital images aren't distorted, they just don't fit our colour perception. (AFAIK, among others, more a logarithmic scale in contrast to the linear used in digital images)
Re:Superiority of Analog (Score:2)
Actually, nonlinear storage/transmission of colour intensity is quite common (aka gamma). TVs use it and most computer systems do too. For a very good description of this field try Charles Poynton's Colour and Gamma FAQs [inforamp.net]
Re:Superiority of Analog (Score:5, Interesting)
Not exactly... many films lean towards more green or red, and there are a lot more variables involved than the light source. Differences in developing can also make a very noticable difference in colour. Even so-called black and white images often have a green, blue or reddish cast to them. (I stare at photos all day at my job, professional and not.) The age and quality of the developing fluids, etc, all factor in. As someone who photographs a lot of artwork, I probably see this a bit more often than a lot of people. I usually have to take anywhere from 3-6 photos to get one that looks suitably like the original artwork. I often still have to digitally alter them once they're scanned, anyway. So as far as colour is concerned, I don't think the quality is any better between analog and digital, esp. for the average person (myself included) who doesn't do their own developing and doesn't have much more than a point-and-click knowledge of cameras.
I do agree with you that analog is still currently superior to digital, but that's mostly to do with the fact that the really impressive digital cameras are way beyond the price range of most people, and the less expensive ones leave enough to be desired that film still has the advantage.
BW Colour cast? (Score:2)
There are other possibilities. A true BW image is silver based - what you see are fixed silver grains. You could have that printed selenium toned, which would give you a slightly purple print and leave behind Selenium Sulfide (i think...)... which is the most practical permanent print you can make. No way for that to be oxidized and removed... very very permanent.
Now you've also mentioned development of film- yes. This plays quite a roll but believe it or not film is developed (as in research) to be quite tolerant of processing mistakes. Yeah you can give film a colour cast thru improper development but more likely than not what you are seeing is a printing error. The Pro lab I used to work for charged $4.00 for a 4x6 that was custom printed. Yes you bet that skin tone was dead on- a 4x6 machine print cost $0.46. I could make 10 of those for the same cost, and probably get to the right tone, but then you are limited by machine buttons (which was I believe 15% increments, or about 10cc (colour correction) filter levels).
Most all developing fluids are seasoned (you refer to them as aged). Thats out of necessity- it's far cheaper to buy and replenish than to mix anew, and it's also more reliable from a standpoint of quality. Occasionally you have to dump a tank and start over but that's a very traumatic experience for all involved (and usually involves running lots of seasoner (exposed but unimportant film/paper) to bring the Bromide levels back to normal).
The biggest problem in photo is metamerism from your description- how can you get a system with 3 dyes to mimic what you see in artwork where the spectrals are all over the place.... even with extremely careful colour management you are going to suffer. I think there is a place that uses 10 inks to reproduce artwork (might be you?)... it's difficult, expensive, laborious but gives great results. It's all about covering the spectrum... and 3 is good, but 10 is much better
Anyway, I've rambled quite far from BW colour casts.... post processing is most likely responsible for it.
Re:Superiority of Analog (Score:2)
Yeah, obviously the color on a piece of paper is going to stay constant with constant light, but how do you propose to transfer that image without color loss in the 'analog' world? Obviously a lot of things are going to affect transfer from medium to medium. Probably more so then in the digital medium. After all, an image might look different on different monitors, but the data stays exactly the same.
Btw, this is kind of an annoyance of mine, what's' the deal with calling film cameras 'analog'? They don't use analog electrical signals, a more proper term would be "optical", "Chemical" or even "photographic". Chemical would probably be the best term, since photographic is kind of generic.
Anyway, electro-analog images are terrible at color correction, there's a reason people call NTSC (our analog TV standard) Never Twice the Same Color. And even if it did have good color correction, we are certainly not about to start using NTSC or some other analog image format with our digital cellphones!
Re:Superiority of Analog (Score:1)
Re:Superiority of Analog (Score:2)
Don't forget that broadcast TV is analog. PAL, NTSC etc. are atrocious for accurate colour. When we want accurate colour, we adjust gamma etc. and match colour profiles end to end or use systems like Pantone. We use calibrated light sources. We use carefully selected emulsions and develop them carefully.
In this application we don't want accurate colour; we want colour that's inoffensive to human visual perception, i.e. renders skin tones decently, and no banding or obvious posterisation. You don't care if your car's colour -- the exact shade of blue -- is not accurately depicted on your friend's Palm Pilot.
We all know why photo science is important (Score:2, Funny)
.... porn!
For once porn doesn't matter (Score:1)
Re:For once porn doesn't matter (Score:2, Funny)
Not the first time she has taken advantage of an Ericsson!!
who cares... (Score:2, Interesting)
spell... (Score:2)
But yeah, I know what you mean, there is a huge difference in image quality between various monitors and video cards. I used to have a really nice Acer monitor (nice in image quality, anyway, not in it's ability to not fall apart...). I put a cheap S3 video card in there (after they got their 3d act together) and the fucking image rippled at high resolutions. It was ridiculous!
Yeah, and that's where the money is, right? (Score:2)
Wrong.
The mass market for mobile telephony lies with the teenagers. Not only that, but fashion-aware teenagers. (For a significant part, this even means "females".)
Sorry to be so blunt, but your market segment is not significant when writing the requirements for a mass-market mobile product.
The answer to... (Score:2, Interesting)
Because otherwise Kodak's business would suck. With this magical message, they can make use of this [uspto.gov] (System and method for generating a universal palette) (and the other 13696 Kodak patents [uspto.gov] ?
That's a patent on dithering! (Score:2)
Damn. U.S. Patent 5,664,080 [uspto.gov] is a patent on the dithering that paint programs have been doing for as long as I can remember. The first claim covers reserving some entries for the GUI, finding a set of colors that best represent the original image, and dithering the image using a repeating halftone pattern. Most paint programs that I have used use this algorithm.
Phones and color screens?? (Score:1)
Of course, now they'll actually need to have good looking women on the other end of the line (or they'll need to "borrow" pics of good looking women from a "reputable" porn site
Ahhhh, a whole new world! (of porn)
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
It's not all about porn (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the applications was a slot machine, and it looked great! The colors are simple, and it came out fine. A lot of the content of the internet is still made up of text and icons, which don't have very stringent requirements on color.
We're still going to see a lot of money being put into palletizing for swapping photos of family and loved (in oh so many ways) ones.
Re:hello = you = sucks (Score:1)
Quintessential? Bah. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is almost as dumb as "wireless web." WML sucks, guys. It's even more confusing that the regular web's interface, and 40% of people don't understand that. Combine it with the size limit on WML pages (1400 bytes is the max through tmobile's gateway, and the goddamn XML headers take up 100. Hell, this post wouldn't sneak in under 1300 characters!) and you've got a confusing, bland interface with no real data. Hardly the killer app that's going to change the world.
Give me a cell phone with no dumb games, a nice address book, sizable buttons, a clean look with no precarious plastic, plug & play USB interface that works with mac/linux/palm/pocketpc, and a phone plan that doesn't try to put its tongue in my ear every time I do something interesting and you'll have solved the cell phone puzzle. I'll gladly give you my $40 per month.
Re:Quintessential? Bah. (Score:1)
how about SERVICE instead of FEATURES (Score:1)
i've had a cellphone 2 times and both times it ended ina percieved breach of contract by them on my part because they're so fucking incompetent, even now after over a year of having no cell phone service (besides road side assistance what reason do i have for being tracked by everyone who knows me??) i'm still dealing with a collections agency who has been sicked on my by Cingular (formerly Cellular One) for a $100 when they still OWE ME $200+ from my deposit which they flat out stole from me and I have no recourse
I talked to the engineer who designed verizon's 56k datapaths (he taught my datacomm class at a community college in indianapolis) and he was the first one to tell me to avoid them like the plague and gave numerous examples of their unscrupulous behavior as well
why not take that $50 a month and do something useful with it like investing it or anything other than funding huge evil corporations
i've even seen people picketing with signs out in front of cellphone stores here in cincinnati trying to ward people away from the absolutely vicious and illegal practices which they *all* have.. when someone is that dedicated, to take time off of work and have his kids there with signs as well you know that he got fucked over and ii'm sure he and i and a lot of you are not alone.. so ask yourself do you really need that cell phone? and if so you do you really need one that has shitty distorted video and a 1 hour battery? why not get a pre paid phone for emergencies and tell them to go fuck themselves for the rest
Re:how about SERVICE instead of FEATURES (Score:1)
and it cut off my
New tech, higher prices (Score:1)
* New Technologies leads to New Phones with more features
* New features results in more bandwidth
* More bandwidth equals higher prices
The consumer is the one who has to pay for all the high quality images send by the phone. This BTW also is the case for MMS. Consumers are paying quite a lot for the GPRS bandwidth used. This will eventually grow when UMTS comes to the world.
The laughing 3rd party is of course the Telco, their network already accepts these Features and can charge their customers only more for the used data.
Just my 2 cents.
Lemming
Kodak article for the nontechnical (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Kodak article for the nontechnical (Score:2)
Ohhh... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds like this will be great for photographs of white people!
Re: (Score:1)
Mobile camming (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the biggest problems we found was battery power, always a problems with computers, but enhanced due to the power sucked by the webcam (lots of pixels to move to the computer at high bandwidth, even if they are just to be compressed using JPEG), and the power sucked by CDPD transmission. Of course, the cam was sending out an image every 5 minutes or so, and the camera was "always on."
I think the naysayers on the camera wireless phones are totally wrong. I don't expect everyone to purchase a camera phone, but I think a lot of people (especially young people and several business niches) will. It's really fun!
The uses of a camera phone do not intersect much with a high-quality megapixel digital camera used for "archival quality" pictures. PhoneCams will be used much more for quick little shots where quality matters little...a bunch of friends at a bar (which will totally change Mardi Gras!), to show a potential purchase while shopping, to show a map with directions, to see if you like the night club, or a "hey I'm in Vegas, look" call while travelling.
Re:Mobile camming (Score:2, Insightful)
PhoneCams will be used much more for quick little shots where quality matters little...
So the market is people who don't really need pictures at all? Good luck with that. It seems to me this "feature", just like text messaging, is being pushed by a culture that just doesn't understand Americans. Just because SMS is all the rage in Norway and the Japan has the highest per capita camera ownership doesn't mean some asshole American like myself simply doesn't want to have just a phone to, you know, fucking talk to people. If you want to have these devices Bluetooth (or whatever) data to each other, fine. But it makes me sick to think where cell phones could be if only they'd focus on the phone instead of trying to make it a GameBoy, too.
Re:Mobile camming (Score:2)
Good luck with that. It seems to me this "feature", just like text messaging, is being pushed by a culture that just doesn't understand Americans. Just because SMS is all the rage in Norway and the Japan...
SMS has has a major cultural impact in the UK, over 750 million messages are now sent every month in the UK. There are lots of circumstances where sending a quick text message is alot more convenient that trying to call someone who may be busy doing other things. Like email the asynchronous nature of text messaging has advantages at times.
Appart from the fact the that the US mobile infrastructure is still pretty much in the stone age, I'd love to know why SMS hasn't taken off in the States? Pretty much everyone else around the world thinks they're a good idea. What's different about American culture that you guys don't?
Al.America..... (Score:1)
_________________________________________
Are fingers are too Fing fat to use the textpad!
Seriously though - I think the interface has alot to do with lack of use. No one I've ever met (aside from some 12 year olds) is willing to punch in a message on a 9 key keypad. It just isn't worth it.
If you couple this with our cultural propensity for rudeness - if our phones on, we're going to talk on it. It doesn't matter where - school, restauraunts, church! It doesn't give much of a reason for us to text.
Text messages. (Score:2)
SMS is great for the same reason email is great - it's asynchronus. I *could* leave a voicemail message asking a friend when/if we're meeting for dinner, but text messaging is far simpler. Most of the time, we're either working or in some other setting where the phone is turned off, so you can't "just talk to people" very easily.
Re:Text messages. (Score:2)
I *could* leave a voicemail message asking a friend when/if we're meeting for dinner, but text messaging is far simpler.
Come again? Try:
"Duck, this is Doc. Sushi's moved back to 9. See you then." (10 seconds, tops)
vs.
3#88222550777788777744 4440280... (I spent a minute on just this part)
Sorry, but that isn't nearly as simple in my book (or the book of millions of others, it seems). You could argue the usefulness of a full keyboard, but then you go adding the bulk of that (even the fold out ones with tiny keys are cumbersome) to what should simply be a phone. I love the fact that I can send actual email to my phone, but I don't ever see sending a message from it because the input is so awkward. Likewise, they better have a killer app for a picture phone before they go touting it as a feature. The prediction of videophone breakthroughs has been constant for decades, but without a cultural buy-in, it's wasted effort.
Re:Text messages. (Score:2)
"Duck, this is Doc. Sushi's moved back to 9. See you then." (10 seconds, tops)
vs.
3#88222550777788777744 4440280... (I spent a minute on just this part)
You're trying to type something as verbose as what you'd say. Try something like:
"Sushi at 9"
You're also leaving out waiting through four rings and a "hi, I'm not in" to leave the message, which alone is likely enough for me to type the above. Then waiting through "welcome to FooPhone's automated voice messaging system", "You have Qux new messages", etc. to retrieve the reply.
I find leaving and retrieving voicemail far more cumbersome and time-consuming. YMMV.
Re:Text messages. (Score:2)
"Duck, this is Doc. Sushi's moved back to 9. See you then." (10 seconds, tops)
vs.
"Sushi at 9"
You can't really tout losing all context as being an advantage. If we were supposed to eat at 8, my message is clear while your message leaves my friend wondering if I mistyped or if they're going to be waiting for an hour. That means it's just the start of an annoying text exchange. To clarify exactly what is happening.
You're also leaving out waiting through four rings and a "hi, I'm not in" to leave the message, which alone is likely enough for me to type the above.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you know the difference between a busy wait and an interrupt. You're justifying (wrongly) the same thing people say in interface studies where they'll do something with the keyboard and they'll think it's faster than the mouse when it only seems faster because the time is split up into discrete events to focus on. Checking/leaving voicemail is not a busy wait; I can be walking down the street and do it. And if you think people driving with cell phones is dangerous, just imagine all those chuckleheads out there trying to peck out a text message while driving.
Sorry, but you haven't made a compelling argument in favor of text messaging in this society. It just doesn't fit. Now if everyone was taking mass transit, yes pervasive SMS would beat trying to talk over other people on an already noisy bus/train. Same thing goes with pictures; it's just not in the culture. When we talk about seeing someone later, we tend to mean something more personal than a pixelated smudge the size of a postage stamp moving at 1 frame/sec. That is why I say mobile imaging doesn't have a future in the States.
Re:Text messages. (Score:2)
vs.
"Sushi at 9"
You can't really tout losing all context as being an advantage. If we were supposed to eat at 8, my message is clear while your message leaves my friend wondering if I mistyped or if they're going to be waiting for an hour.
So change it to "Sushi now 9", and you have all of the original context (the fact that you will see him then is obvious, and sender is indicated by the message header).
My point is that the amount of information being conveyed by the original statement is very low, and so doesn't *need* a very long typed message.
Checking/leaving voicemail is not a busy wait; I can be walking down the street and do it.
In my own daily routine, checking/leaving voicemail _is_ usually a busywait, for a number of schedule and circumstance-related reasons. If you have enough walking time or what-have-you for it yourself, more power to you. However, I doubt I'm unique.
Re. driving, I do not consider text messaging or voice mailing while driving a good idea.
Now if everyone was taking mass transit, yes pervasive SMS would beat trying to talk over other people on an already noisy bus/train.
Last time I checked, there are plenty of mass-transit commuters on this side of the ocean, too.
I'm not arguing that _everyone_ should use SMS over voice mail. Just that for a large fraction of the population it seems to make sense, so I'm puzzled by statements alleging the opposite.
Same thing goes with pictures; it's just not in the culture.
At no point did my argument touch pictures; they're a non-issue for this discussion (I agree that they're useless for most purposes).
Re:Mobile camming (Score:2)
Re:Mobile camming (Score:1)
How much evolution has there been in ordinary phones since Bell? Not that much.
There just is not much room for improving a device designed just to transfer sound. I think the phone-aspect of a mobile phone has been pretty stable for ten years now.
Only Sony gets it (Score:2, Insightful)
It takes too much work from users (Score:1, Interesting)
Color management on the desktop has already been solved, however it takes active intervention form the user to work and can be very confusing to acutally use. Apple does the best job with ColorSync, and MS is trying to catch up with ICM. Linux is a color management desert (far as I can tell).
If you use Photoshop on a Mac you can achieve a very successful color-managed workflow with very little work. It seems that the only geeks that care about color are prepress geeks. Nobody else seems to have a clue, so I'm glad Kodak is trying to prick up eveyone's ears.
In principal, the solution is simple. Use color profiles (ICC color profiles). Profiles describe how a device's colors (rgb 255,0,0) for example, map to a "real" color defintion--defined using a device-independent color space.
You need:
1. A profile for the display device.
2. An image file with an attached profile -- often called a "source profile".
3. A "color management engine" that creates the best approximation in the display devices color model of the image based on a "rendering intent" -- usually "perceptual", "relative colormetric", "absolute colormetric", etc.
The problem is that the only way to get truly relaiable profile for a display device is to put an instrument with a suction cup on your monitor and measure the monitor's actual performance. Or, for a printer, scan a print of an IT-8 test pattern into color profile building software. While Windows and Mac OS (9 and X) have buit in support for most of the color workflow, the colorimiters and profile-building software are expensive.
Unless PDA's start coming with mini suction-cupped colorimiters, then the best anyone can do is guess. Just like the sRGB profile which assumes that everyone has an old crappy monitor. That or someone will invent a way to manufacture LCD displays so that every display has exactly (in terms of statistical signifigance) the same color rendering performance, degrading predictably over time.
Re:It takes too much work from users (Score:1)
GPL Color Management for Linux/BSD: Littlecms for Linux/BSD/Windows [littlecms.com]
GPL Desktop Publishing which is uses lttlecms: http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid [altmuehlnet.de]
wow (Score:1)
True Color in Real Time (Score:1)
i'll tell you why... (Score:2)
I'll tell you why they'd say that right now -- because that's what their company does. They make money selling imaging devices and technology. Obviously they need to look out for and push the market for what their company sells.
I'm sure the RIAA could tell us why Digital Right Management is more important than clockspeeds and data rates -- it doesn't mean it's true :P
big deal (Score:2)
Can someone explain this to me a little more? (Score:1)
Last Post! (Score:1)
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