Abstract

The set of metamers for a given device response can be calculated given the device’s spectral sensitivities. Knowledge of the metamer set has been useful in practical applications such as color correction and reflectance recovery. Unfortunately, the device sensitivities of a camera or scanner are not known, and they are difficult to estimate reliably outside the laboratory. We show how metamer sets can be calculated when a device’s spectral sensitivities are not known. The result is built on two observations: first, the set of all reflectance spectra consists of convex combinations of certain basic colors that tend to be very bright (or dark) and have high chroma; second, the convex combinations that describe reflectance spectra result in convex combinations of red–green–blue (RGB) values. Thus, given an RGB value, it is possible to find the set of convex combinations of the RGB values of the basic colors that generate the same RGB value. The corresponding set of convex combinations of the basic spectra is the metamer set.

© 2007 Optical Society of America

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