Preferred Skin Colour Reproduction
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Preferred Skin Colour Reproduction Huanzhao Zeng Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds Department of Colour Science September, 2011 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. - ii - - iii - Acknowledgements It would have been impossible to complete this work without the help of many others. First, I want to thank my supervisor, Prof. Ronnier Luo, for encouraging me to continue learning, helping me identifying the research field, and advising me on every step of this research. Many thanks to Dr. Jan Morovic for encouraging me to work on a PhD degree under Prof. Luo‟s supervision and for many advices on this research, Prof. Steve Westland‟s advices and Dr. Di-Yuan Tzeng‟s advices on my research. I acknowledge the help of Dr. Tim Mauer and Dr. David Berfanger in organizing the first psychophysical experiment in HP Vancouver Site, and Mr. Tuo Wu and Mrs. Shilin Guo in testing the first skin colour enhancement method in HP San Diego Site. I also acknowledge many observers participated in my psychophysical experiments. To my family, I would like to express my thankful heart for their faithful support and consistent love. I apologize that many vacations, family events, and parties were missed because of my dedication to this research. Finally, I acknowledge the support of my employer, Hewlett-Packard Company. Its financial assistance and flexible working policy allowing me to work from Leeds made this work possible. Special thanks to my supervisors, Kevin Hudson, Dave Pinkernell, Ron Gompertz, and Kirby Frugia, for their support on my career development. - iv - Abstract The memory colour reproduction is an important factor in judging image quality of photographic images of real life scenes. As the most important memory colour category, skin tone was extensively studied for preferred colour reproduction in this research. The methodology to study skin colour preference was then applied to study the colour preference of two other important colour categories: green foliage and blue sky. There are three essential parts for preferred skin colour enhancement: 1) building a skin colour model to detect skin colours or skin pixels; 2) finding a preferred skin colour region or a preferred skin colour centre; and 3) developing an algorithm to morph skin colours toward the preferred skin colour region. This study for skin colour enhancement started with the mathematical modelling of the skin colour region for skin colour detection. The modelling of skin colours was then applied to adjust skin colours of test images for psychophysical experiments that were to determine a preferred skin colour region. Finally, the skin colour modelling and the preferred skin colour centres were applied to adjust skin colours of digital photographic images for preferred colour reproduction. Two approaches were developed to model the skin colour distribution for skin colour detection. The first approach was to model a local colour region for general applications. A convex hull is constructed to fit the geometrical shape of a local region, and then the convex hull is approximated with mathematical formulae. The formulations and data fitting are adjusted with interactive 3-D visualization. The approach is flexible for fitting data gamut with various mathematical forms for different purposes. The other approach was to model skin colours with elliptical shapes. Three elliptical skin colour models were developed for skin colour detection. The first one is to model the skin colour cluster using a single ellipse ignoring the lightness (or luminance) dependency. It is simple and efficient, and the skin colour detection accuracy may be adequate for many applications. In the second model, the skin colour ellipse is adapted to different lightness so that the shape of the ellipse fits the skin colour cluster more accurately. The model is more complex to train and is less efficient in computation, but it is more accurate in skin colour detection. In the third method, an ellipsoid is trained to fit the skin colour cluster. It is almost as simple to train as the first model, but the skin colour detection accuracy is improved. Finally, these models were applied to train mixed skin colours, African skin colours, Caucasian skin colours, and Asian skin colours. - v - The results of skin colour modelling were applied to guide psychophysical experiments to determine preferred skin colours for skin colour enhancement. A series of psychophysical experiments were conducted to study skin colour preference of mixed culture background; skin colour preference by ethnicity and skin colour preference across ethnicities. The results reveal that preferred skin colours are more chromatic than real skin colours; observer variances in skin colour preference are larger in chroma than in hue; the preferred skin colour centre for mixed skin colours is about (21, 24) for CIE a*b* with a hue angle of 49o in D50 illuminant; Orientals prefer slightly less chromatic skin colours than Africans and Caucasians; and preferred skin colour variations in Africans are higher than the variations in Caucasians and the variations in Orientals. In cross-culture preference, Orientals consistently prefer slight less chromatic Oriental, Caucasian, and African skin colours than Caucasians and Africans, and Africans prefer more chromatic Caucasian and Oriental skin colours than Caucasians and Orientals. Comparison of preferred skin colour ellipses in CIELAB and CAM02-UCS reveals that CAM02-UCS is more uniform than CIELAB in the skin colour region. Preferred skin colour enhancement algorithms were developed for skin colour enhancement in this research. The first method applies a static skin colour model to detect skin colours, and morphs skin colours toward a preferred skin colour centre. Psychophysical experimental results validate that the method of preferred skin colour enhancement effectively identifies skin colours without face recognition, improves the skin colour preference, and does not objectionably affect preferred skin colours in original images. The second method, skin colour enhancement using face box information, was proposed to further improve the result of skin colour enhancement. The skin colour distribution of face boxes were used to adjust the skin colour modelling and to adjust the coefficients for skin colour enhancement. The latter approach is more effective for enhancing skin colours that are far off from normal skin colours. Lastly, a new algorithm to morph skin colours was proposed. The method to build elliptical skin colour models was further applied to model colour regions of green foliages and blue skies of photographic images for colour detection and enhancement. Elliptical colour models for these two colour regions were trained and were used to detect green foliage and blue sky colours. The training results of the elliptical colour modelling of skin, green foliage, and blue sky of photographic images in CIELAB and CAM02-UCS were analysed to study these three memory colour objects and to study the colour space uniformity between CIELAB and CAM02-UCS. - vi - Abbreviations CMT Colour Masker Tool CRT Cathode Ray Tube ICC International Color Consortium LCD Liquid Crystal Display LUT Lookup Table PCS Profile Connection Space (in ICC Colour Management System) PSCC Preferred Skin Colour Centre SPD Spectral Power Distribution UCS Uniform Colour Space ROC Receiver Operating Characteristics - vii - Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. iii Abstract ..................................................................................................................... iv Abbreviations ........................................................................................................... vi Contents ................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures .......................................................................................................... xv List of Tables ........................................................................................................ xxiii Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 1.1 Aims and Scope .......................................................................................... 1 1.2 Thesis Structure .......................................................................................... 2 1.3 Summary of Contributions to Knowledge .................................................. 3 Chapter 2 Literature Survey ................................................................................... 5 2.1 Human colour perception ............................................................................ 5 2.1.1 The Nature of Light ........................................................................ 5 2.1.2 The Human Colour Vision .............................................................. 6 2.1.2.1 Colour Perception by Eye ................................................... 6 2.1.2.2 Colour Perception by Brain ................................................ 8