Among the shortcomings of TV system of high sharpness is that fact that the problem of increasing of noise suppression is not solved jet. In the digital TV the problem of increasing image sharpness is not solved. Their common shortcoming is their bad compatibility with existing systems of standard TV and very high complicativeness and cost. The perspective alternative to such systems is TELAN TV system of high quality. This system is free from above mentioned defects. TELAN system by receiving signals from existing standard transmitters provides improving of image sharpness to the level that is limited only by solving ability of cathode ray- tube and provides additional suppression of high frequency hindrances to 20 dB. Cost of such system practically doesn't distinguish from existing today television technic. Such results may be achieved by using psycho-physiological surplusment of analog video signals.

Dual nonlinear correlation (DNC) is a general operation in optical pattern recognition involving linear and nonlinear filtering methods. DNC also allows to apply new non-symmetric operators to both the analyzed scene channel and to the reference target channel. A third nonlinearity introduced in the frequency domain allows the control of the region of the spectrum where the DNC is applied. The implementation of the DNC is carried out in a sole filterless optoelectronic processor based on a two-step joint transform correlator assisted by computer. Experimental conditions related to camera and spatial light modulator features have an influence on the method performance. We present some applications of the DNC to textured and color pattern recognition with variable discrimination capability.

Color cameras usually contain a device called white balance that allows one to capture a white reference without predominant colors. This adjustment works when the light source changes, in order to compensate for possible variations of the spectral radiant power distribution of the source. If the compensation is not totally correct, then variations in the RGB values of a color image are usually registered. We have analyzed the compensating mechanism of white balance in a color CCD camera. Changes between common lights -- fluorescent, incandescent and daylight -- have been considered. We have carried out two experiments. In the first one, we have adjusted the white balance for a given lighting and it has not been readjusted even though the light source changed. In the second one, we have adjusted the white balance for each change of light source. The discussion of the results is based on the registered variations obtained in both experiments after sequentially capturing one hundred color sheets covering the visible spectrum under separate illumination.

Multispectral color image scanning and the transport of relevant spectral information up to output devices offer essential advantages compared to conventional three channel color reproduction. This is particularly true in open image communication systems which have to consider many different color reproduction technologies. The first part of the paper covers fundamental problems of three channel color image scanning. Afterwards, the basic ideas of a multispectral reproduction technology are presented to solve the problems. The multispectral scanner as a main part of the system is addressed in the next chapter. A major problem of multispectral technology is the encoding of the large amount of spectral data delivered by the scanner. A second important point with respect to the application of multispectral technology is compatibility with existing color systems using tristimulus color values. The paper present concepts for compatible and efficient spectral data encoding and discusses aspects of optimization strategies. The state of the art of multispectral technology and an outlook are given finally.

The traditional techniques of image capture, scanning, proofing, and separating do not take advantage of colorimetry and spectrophotometry. For critical color-matching applications such as catalog sales, art-book reproductions, and computer-aided design, typical images, although pleasing, are unacceptable with respect to color accuracy. The limitations that lead to these errors have a well-defined theoretical basis and are a result of current hardware and software. This has led us to a re-examination of the traditional graphic reproduction paradigm. A research and development program has begun that will alleviate the theoretical limitations associated with traditional techniques. There are four main phases: (1) Multi-spectral image capture, (2) Spectral-based separation and printing algorithm development, (3) Implementation on press, and (4) Systems integration with data and image archives. This paper describes this new paradigm, summarizes recent research results, and considers implementation opportunities.

We evaluate the best achievable performances of three different types of color printers, which follow the Neugebauer model, the Yule-Nielsen model and the Kubelka-Munk model. In an extensive optimization we calculate the best primary spectra that lead to a minimal average color error for a set of test spectra under a set of illuminations. The primary spectra are constrained to nonnegative values and a smooth characteristic. The results indicate a large potential to improve the current printer technique by only changing the ink characteristics. In addition it is shown that the Yule-Nielsen model, which is distinguished by consideration of dot gain, yields better results than the plain Neugebauer model. Both are surpassed by the Kubelka-Munk based model when appropriate primary spectra are used.

Multispectral imaging has been proposed as a solution to most of the problems of conventional image reproduction. The paper is focused on the practical problems of designing and operating a multispectral scanner. Several design parameters of a multispectral imaging device are discussed, including the positioning of the multispectral filters and the spectral reconstruction algorithm used during the image capture process. Finally, experimental results are given.

We are developing a spectral characteristics database for evaluating color reproduction in image input devices. The database is designed so that spectral characteristics are systematically divided by category, according to the purpose to which they are to be applied, and every category has a sufficient variety of samples. The categories are as follows: photographic materials, graphic color printing, computer color printers output, paints, flowers, leaves, human skin colors and historical Krinov data. The total number of colors is 49,672. The database is being proposed to be published as Japanese/International standard technical reports for use in establishing a new color reproduction evaluation method.

Economical quality metrics for electronic imaging are to obey natural psychophysical laws. The perceptible image quality has proved to be related subconsciously to few dominant objects that could be standardized. The brain response is a product of their single-stimulus quality functions whose mathematics is typical to other psychophysical response-stimulus dependencies. They contain a high-quality tolerance plateau and one or two linear portions of quality decrease with the log-stimulus variation. Every stimulus is an optical property of an image detail, simply measurable and directly perceived by vision. Transfer properties of imaging system are to provide the stimuli to meet their psychophysical tolerances. In spite of much smaller optical differences, perceptible under some artificial non-imaging conditions (e.g., colorimetry), most of scene objects have long high-quality plateau. Few dominant image details make the large photometric distortions in all the rest not attract observers' attention. Intentional drawing the attention to some image features may involve other details into evaluation. The stimulus quality functions can be either extracted by an iteration procedure from the multi-stimulus data on a representative set of images or obtained in a single-stimulus experiment. Instead of the numerous rough correlations to arbitrary chosen integral features of different images, the exhaustive description can directly and accurately predict the perceptible color image quality, issuing from a few simple optical measurements, and appears to be generalized on either quantifiable produce features.

In some specific problems, a gray scale analysis is unfortunately not sufficient: color is necessarily required. Generally in these kinds of problems it is necessary to be able to quantify the quality of an image in accordance with a reference one and the quality of a process in accordance with another one (for example to evaluate degradations introduced when compressing color images). Such quantifications must provide results correlated with human vision since color image quality is generally evaluated by human observers. In a first time we have developed objective local descriptors for the evaluation of quality of color images. Then we have established a process to validate the accuracy and the correlation of these descriptors with human visual perception. The goal of this paper is to expose how we determine during an experimental process whether retained descriptors are correlated with a visual classification of color images based on their quality. We describe the whole experimental process used to study this correlation. We also expose results obtained through the experimental process.

Recently, chromatic-response function with uniform scales are obtained as logarithms of proper cone activation ratios (CAR hypothesis) and can be considered as Cartesian coordinates for equiluminant-color palettes. Particularly, a properly combined choice of the 'fundamental' primaries, that are at the basis of these functions, and of the RGB primaries of the display give equiluminant-chromatic 'rectangular' palettes, that with the Weberian-lightness define a color space with good scale uniformity and suitable for the color-signal coding. All the transformations are logarithmic. The couple of 'fundamental' primaries laying on the alychne and a third one of pure luminance are considered for trichromatic cameras.

The white point characterization of display images reaches new interest due to the widespread application of computer image processing and electronic printing. Some years ago it was the general consensus that the maximum composite signal of the red, green and blue channels should be used as the white point of the display. In characterizing this white point the concept of correlated color temperature is used, based on the outdated u,v-diagram. An experiment was conducted to investigate the appropriateness of the concept of the correlated color temperature. Experiments showed that a color difference in CIELUV color space is a better descriptor of correlated color temperature than the traditional method. It is recommended that for evaluating the correlated color temperature of computer screens and for comparing the white point of the screen with that of input pictures and printed outputs the new concept of minimum color difference in CIELUV color space be used.

Colorimetric data are generally not enough sufficient to describe color appearance of materials. In this paper we propose to use a description of surface that takes into account texture and relief. The first problem encountered is to have a reliable description of color appearance after the calibration stage of the camera. To do that, we have used a simple and straightforward method based on a determination of a mapping transform from RGB to XYZ. We have used the co- occurrence color matrix to describe the texture of the material. Relief can be described as the 'apparition of texture with a rising light,' we have therefore studied the variation of the texture throughout the change of illumination angle.

In order to properly calibrate an electronic camera for a variety of illuminants it is necessary to estimate the spectral sensitivity of the camera. This spectral characterization is obtained by measuring a set of samples of known spectral reflectances and by inverting the resulting system of linear equations. In the presence of noise, this system inversion is not straightforward. We describe several approaches to this problem. In particular we show that the choice of samples is of great importance for the quality of the characterization, and we present an algorithm for the choice of a reduced number of samples.

Accurate color reproduction of slide images on a display is a complicated procedure. It requires the characterization and control of several imaging processes and the application of appropriate color-appearance models to account for the differences in viewing conditions on a projection screen in the dark surround on the one hand and on a display in dim surround on the other hand. This paper reviews the development and evaluation of a new concept of scanning of color slides. The concept results in a three dimensional look-up table to achieve a high image quality. This table is calculated for all possible film colors under a variety of viewing conditions and considers the gamut mapping of slide colors and the transformation to RGB signals to drive a display.

A lot of materials used in construction industry are materials showing strong color texture, which may give the product its commercial value. We plan to perform automated appearance sorting using a tri-CCD color video camera as a measurement tool. The aim of the present work is the refinement of a calibration process allowing this tool to deliver for each pixel the same information as a spectroradiometer (CIEL*a*b* coordinates). Analysis of the acquisition tool allows characterization of the card and camera behavior (linearity of RGB gains, spatially varying and fixed pattern noises). Color calibration is performed using measurements with a spectroradiometer.

Manufacturer of photogrammetric instruments have developed specific scanners for aerial photographs, in parallel to printing industry. Main objective of this specific scanners is to guarantee a high geometric precision of plus or minus 0.001 to 0.002 mm for a standard format of original film documents of 23 X 23 cm and to scope with the high image resolution of the original images. Within a study of OEEPE (European Organisation for Experimental Photogrammetric Research) the most important photogrammetric scanners used in practice have been tested. Standard procedures are in development to analyze the dynamic range of the scanners, the image noise, the image sharpness and the color fidelity. Practical all photogrammetric scanners are based on CCD technology. The article presents the techniques applied for the testing of the scanners concerning the determination of the MTF of the scanners, the image noise, the dynamic range and the color fidelity and gives typical results for various scanners. The scanners tested are manufactured by Intergraph, Zeiss, Agfa, Helava and Wehrli.

This paper addresses digital techniques used to identify automatically those color photographs whose optical densities fall outside acceptable norms for a visual system. Targets are of two different kinds indicating the need for different recognition algorithms. First, the investigation focuses on color pictures showing high contrast in optical densities such as pictures taken with flash and pictures taken against the light; it estimates statistical parameters which determine mixture densities. Results of Maximum Likelihood, Moment estimation using Prony's Method, Multiscale Analysis and Marquardt optimization algorithm applied to the histogram recognition problem have been compared in terms of efficiency and speed for both low and more detailed vision. Attention is then focussed on pictures showing an optical density gradient in a given direction. Solutions such as plane fitting, robust Median Based Estimator are compared with a new '4-step Median Based Estimator.'

Digital watermarks have been proposed as a method for discouraging illicit copying and distribution of copyright material. This paper presents a new approach for the secure and robust copyright protection of digital images. The digital watermarks described in this paper are designed to be, as far as possible, invariant against image transformations such as rotation, translation, scaling and cropping. We concentrate especially on the desirable properties of the Fourier Transform and propose a novel technique based on an invisible template which allows us to reverse many of the effects of image processing on the digital watermark. Robustness of the watermark to operations such as lossy compression is achieved by using a perceptually adaptive spread spectrum communications approach, in which a spread spectrum signal is embedded in selected components of the magnitude spectrum of the image. The keys used to embed the spread spectrum signal are generated, certified, authenticated and securely distributed using a public key infrastructure containing an electronic copyright office and a certification authority. The security architecture used for this purpose is also outlined.

This paper presents a new approach for the copyright protection of digital multimedia data. The system applies cryptographic protocols and a public key technique for different purposes, namely encoding/decoding a digital watermark generated by any spread spectrum technique and the secure transfer of watermarked data from the sender to the receiver in a commercial business process. The public key technique is applied for the construction of a one-way watermark embedding and verification function to identify and prove the uniqueness of the watermark. In addition, our approach provides secure owner authentication data who has initiated the watermark process for a specific data set. Legal dispute resolution is supported for multiple watermarking of digital data without revealing the confidential keying information.

This paper discusses secure architecture and protocols of managing Intellectual Property Rights in distributed content databases in a close environment. This discussion has been conducted within the European project AQUARELLE. This paper presents a short survey of watermarking technologies and focuses on functionalities offered by such techniques. We propose the terms of watermarking, fingerprinting and monitoring. For our implementation, we have worked with the Universite catholique de Louvain (UCL). This work is joint work with Jean-Francois Delaigle. Next we focus mainly on keys issues, and conclude that a trusted third party is needed to establish a verification service of watermarks. Next the DHWM key exchange is presented, based on the simple idea that watermarking and verification can be separated. This scheme uses the Diffie-Hellman key-exchange protocol. Next some hints on the implementation of the scheme and on its correctness are given.

This paper compares different median filter methods to perform noise filtering and color image enhancement. The median filter performs a nonlinear filtering operation according to a window which moves over a signal, and computes at each point, the median value of the data within the window. This value is then taken as the output. In this paper, we have used a 3 dimensional signal: a RGB color. To find this median value, we need to define an order relation between all the points of the color data set. We propose to test 3 methods: one using the global principal component transform of the color image, one using the local principal component of the current window, one using the bit mixing, which transforms the 3D signal (the RGB components) directly in one 1D signal by a bit mixing.

For digital restoration of motion picture films the correct scanning (actually measuring physical properties i.e. optical densities) is vital. Therefore thus, the delicate handling of aged films and the prohibitive high prices of commercially available scanners forced the development of a simple yet good quality film scanning device. The scanning principle and the increasing aspects specific to digital restoration will be discussed.

A real-time inverse dithering system for video display can be implemented very efficiently if operations are needed on only the current scan line. To optimize overall display quality, corresponding one-dimensional ordered dither array is sought. This paper describes a one-dimensional recursive tessellation algorithm. A serendipitous implementation involves a simple bit-reversal of the horizontal pixel address. To optimize two- dimensional homogeneity, the 1-D array is phase adjusted in the vertical direction. A scheme for selecting candidate phase vectors is also presented. The recursive tessellation algorithm i generalized to identify equivalence class arrays that share the same homogeneity property but have different ordering.

Error-diffusion is widely used to generate intensity levels between the primary levels of multi-level color printing devices (ink-jet printers, electrophotographic printers). Standard error-diffusion algorithms produce structure artifacts at rational intensity levels such as 1/3, 1/2 and 2/3. The boundary between structure artifacts breaks the visual continuity in regions of low intensity gradients and generates undesirable false contours. These undesirable structure artifacts are also visible when error-diffusion is used to generate intermediate intensity levels between primary levels. In this contribution, we propose to remove these structure artifacts by introducing small discontinuities in the tone correction curve, thereby avoiding reproducing the intensity levels responsible for the generation of structure artifacts. The method can not be applied to bilevel printing, since the forbidden intensity regions responsible for the structure artifacts would be too large. In multi-level color printing however, the forbidden intensity regions are small enough and do not produce any visible intensity breaks in varying intensity wedges.

A new halftoning method for color image is proposed. The proposed algorithm is very simple to implement the halftoning in hardware and software, which indexes the image pixel values to a binary database as proposed by Sullivan et al. The database is a set of dot profiles representing the corresponding gray levels. The dot profiles are sequentially generated from a visual-optimized seed pattern which is well- distributed by contrast sensitivity function (CSF), in order that the dot profiles have the visual-optimality as well as correlation between dot profiles of all gray levels. Circular convolution technique is used for generating the dot profiles so that the periodic blocking artifacts can be reduced. The proposed color halftoning method uses one database which is shared for all color components and can be directly used for monochrome halftoning, but each color component has different indexing scheme with a circularly shifted indexing to reduce the correlation between dot profiles of color components. The simple structure and small memory requirement of the proposed halftoning method make the processing time fast. The halftone image quality of the proposed method is better than that of ordered dither.

Recently, new applications such as printing on demand and personalized printing have arisen where lossless halftone image compression can be useful for increasing transmission speed and lowering storage costs. State-of-the-art lossless bilevel image compression schemes like JBIG achieve only moderate compression ratios because they do not fully take into account the special image characteristics. In this paper, we present an improvement on the context modeling scheme by adapting the context template to the periodic structure of the classical halftone image. This is a non-trivial problem for which we propose a fast close-to-optimal context template selection scheme based on the sorted autocorrelation function of a part of the image. We have experimented with classical halftones of different resolutions and sizes and screened under different angles as well as with stochastic halftones. For classical halftones, the global improvement with respect to JBIG in its best mode is about 30% to 50%; binary tree modeling increases this by another 5% to 10%. For stochastic halftones, the autocorrelation-based template gives no improvement, though an exhaustive search technique shows that even bigger improvements are feasible using the context modeling technique; introducing binary tree modeling increases the compression ratio with about 10%.

Our contribution relates to lossless compression of pseudo color images (images with a palette). The proposed method is a preprocessing step preceding actual compression. During preprocessing indices in the palette are semioptimally permuted. For actual image compression, our own nonlinear predictor based method is used but the proposed invisible palette modification is relevant to most of other compression techniques too. Experiments with numerous images show that indices reordering in the palette yields data savings from 10 to 50% for typical images. We suggest a preprocessing phase that (a) analyzes statistics of the adjacency relations of index values, (b) performs optimization, and (c) permutes indices to palette to achieve more smooth image. The smoother image causes that the lossless image compression methods yield less output data. The task to optimally permute indices is a NP complete combinatorial optimization. Instead of checking all possibilities, we propose a reasonable initial guess and a fast suboptimal hill climbing optimization.

This paper presents a new adaptive compression scheme for continuous-tone still images with two main benefits: 1) it allows to take advantage of a set of algorithms (such as JPEG, wavelets, fractals, ...) by switching between them according to the image content and target compression ratio; 2) it tunes automatically the algorithm-specific parameters (e.g. JPEG quantization factor) in order to meet the user compression objective (e.g. a target compression ratio). A performance evaluation test indicates the following: 1) our adaptive coder can succeed with probability approximately equals 72% in selecting automatically the best technique (among JPEG, a wavelet algorithm, and a fractal one); 2) the difference between the obtained compression ratio and the target is lower than 10%; 3) the computing overhead due to algorithm selection and parameter choice is negligible. This adaptive compression technique has been proposed to the ISO standardization committee currently working on the definition of the future 'JPEG-2000' standard.

In this article a method to classify digital images into three categories based on a provisional analysis of the image content and a subsequent compression with the help of a suitable algorithm of compression is proposed. To classify the images two parameters are used. The first parameter carries the frequency information about the image. It represents the mean of the absolute amplitude of the Wavelet coefficients in the high frequency parts of the spectrum. The second parameter is an indicator concerning information about the structure of the image. The second parameter is constituted through the entropy of the length of the segments in one line and the entropy of the length of the segments in one column. In this article the results for the check of those classification rules for DICOM images are given as a confirmation of the effectiveness of the method proposed. The implementation of the image classification algorithm and the compression algorithms in the modeling process is performed in JAVA.

CMYK color images are used extensively in pre-press applications. When compressing those color images one has to deal with four different color channels. Usually compression algorithms only take into account the spatial redundancy that is present in the image data. This approach doesn't yield an optimal data reduction since there exists a high correlation between the different colors in natural images that is not taken into account. This paper shows that a significant gain in data reduction can be achieved by exploiting this color redundancy. Some popular transform coders, including DCT-based JPEG and the SPIHT wavelet coder, were used for reducing the spatial redundancy. The performance of the algorithms was evaluated using a quality criterium based on human perception like the CIELab (Delta) E error.

An adaptive color management strategy depending on the image contents is proposed. Pictorial color image is classified into different object areas with clustered color distribution. Euclidian or Mahalanobis color distance measures, and maximum likelihood method based on Bayesian decision rule, are introduced to the classification. After the classification process, each clustered pixels are projected onto principal component space by Hotelling transform and the color corrections are performed for the principal components to be matched each other in between the individual clustered color areas of original and printed images.

A method is described for realizing an exact color reproduction on a printer using more than three color inks. The CIE-L*a*b* color system is used as the device-independent color space. The mapping from the L*a*b* color space to the printer color space is constructed using a neural network. This mapping does not use such techniques as UCR and GCR. The problem in four-color printing is considered as the problem of controlling an unknown system with four inputs and three outputs. We present a two-phase procedure for solving this control problem. The first phase determines a printer model, and the second phase determines the combined network system of a printer model and a controller so as to provide the identity mapping. This technique is applied to the color control of a six-color printer using CMYK plus light Cyan and light Magenta.

An image analysis system that simulates human print quality perception is being developed at The London College of Printing. This paper reports on some of the interim results of this project. The image analysis system has been tested to see whether it could detect the degradation of printed text character images when they are photocopied. The variables measured were the size, reflectance intensity and reflectance intensity gradients of these images. The system has been tested by making measurements on text characters without any need for alignment of the text character to the camera using neural networks.

A novel thermal ink jet heater based on diamond is presented. In contrast to the conventional actuator systems passivation layers are not necessary. This reduces the manufacturing cost and increases the thermal efficiency of the micro heater. In addition, the excellent mechanical properties of diamond guarantee protection against cavitation damages. In this paper the theoretical and experimental development process from first ideas up to the final prototype of the diamond ink jet is described. The new thermal ink jet heater has been tested successfully and its advantages are demonstrated by experiments using high speed cinematography.

In the ink jet printer industry the stroboscopic visualization method is a standard tool for the characterization of printheads. However, this method fails for thermal ink jets in case of the existence of satellite droplets which are very critical considering print quality. This is also true for the bubble formation inside the ink chamber of the printhead. Detailed studies have shown that the phenomenon of satellite droplets is a nonreproducible dynamic process. Real high speed cine photomicrography forms the basis of a new test setup which allows the visualization of such highly dynamic nonreproducible phenomena. This new setup has been used to study the ejection, the free flight, and the impact of droplets of an ink jet on print media under real printing conditions.

Aquarelle is a three-year project supported by the Telematics Applications Programme of the European Union, aiming at designing a resource discovery system on the Internet, applied to cultural heritage documentation. The system relies on the Z39.50 protocol to support access to heterogeneous databases, including SGML document repositories. Its most original features are direct linking from SGML documents to database records, an advanced link management facility, and query broadcasting to dynamically selected databases.

There is a great demand for efficient tools that can, on the basis of the pictorial content, organize large quantities of images and rapidly retrieve those of interest. With that goal in mind we present a method for indexing complex color images. The basic idea is to exploit image data decomposition and compression based on the standard Haar multiresolution wavelet transform to describe image content. In this way we are able to effectively eliminate data redundancy and concisely represent the salient features of the image in image signatures of predefined lengths. In the retrieval phase image signatures are compared using a similarity measure that the system has 'learned' from user's. Experimental results confirm the feasibility of our approach, which outperforms more standard procedures, in retrieval accuracy and at lower computational costs.

Many materials used by the building industry show a color texture which affects the product commercial value. This texture can be seen as the spatial arrangement of regions of acceptable color differences. This work describes an appearance based automated sorting via color texture analysis, using ceramic tiles as example. Textural analysis of the tiles digital images expressed in CIEL*a*b* color system is performed through the analysis of intrinsic features of each region and relationships between regions. Results obtained through the automated process are compared to a visual sorting which leads to calculation of application dependant color and texture tolerances.

The accurate identification and delineation of the Lungs structure from computerized tomography images would be extremely helpful in the clinical understanding of a patient's condition. The ability to view the Lungs in three dimensions and to zoom in on problem areas would also be of great assistance to a clinician in the decision making process. This paper focuses on the development of a method for the automatic segmentation and three dimensional visualization of the Lungs structure.

Neurosurgery is an extremely specialized area of medical practice, requiring many years of training. It has been suggested that virtual reality models of the complex structures within the brain may aid in the training of neurosurgeons as well as playing an important role in the preparation for surgery. This paper focuses on the application of a probabilistic neural network to the automatic segmentation of the ventricles from magnetic resonance images of the brain, and their three dimensional visualization.

In this paper, a segmentation method for agricultural fields in aerial sequences of images based on the Circular Symmetri Auto-Regressive (CSAR) model is presented. The image sequences assumed to be acquired by a video camera (RGB-CCD system) from an aeroplane, which moves linearly over the scene. The objects in the scenes being considered in this paper, are agricultural fields. The classes of agricultural fields to be distinguished are determined by the type of crop, e.g. potatoes sugar beet, wheat, etc. In order to recognize and classify these fields from aerial sequence of images, a reliable segmentatio is required. Here texture features are used for segmentation. The implementation of segmentation for agricultural fields in aerial sequences of images is based on CSAR model in texture analysis. By comparing the estimated parameters of CSAR model from different area in an image, the characteristics and the class of a texture may be determined. The paper describes the segmentation method and its evaluation through experiments. Based on segmentation results, classification for surface texture of vegetation from aerial sequences of images is realized.

The demands changes with the customers marketplace which makes it crucial for prepress companies of today and those of tomorrow to be able to change their services. The production tools are becoming more standardized and similar through out the industry. Intelligent tools are developed at a rapid pace which results in possibilities to automate these processes. Key success factors of today and tomorrow are the ability to change and understand the customers' market. The market demands shorter delivery times and lower costs. The total number of printed editions are decreasing while each edition contains an increased numbers of pages and images. The customers requires higher quality with the ability to control and predict the end result. Case studies, interviews and workshops have been carried out at commercial printing companies, prepress houses, image bureau's, advertising agencies and digital photographers in Sweden. A major part of the research focus on the digital image process at eleven companies in the graphic arts industry, all of which have prepress. The analysis has resulted in the thorough knowledge of both the production process and the parameters to measure productivity and quality. A model for the evaluation of changes is presented, with measurable values for productivity and quality. The model can be used to map and compare the states prepress are in, and/or be used to evaluate if changes are needed.

This paper describes the issues associated with digital files and high-end color reproduction. It highlights some industry experiences related to the use of digital files and considers what the Adobe Acrobat^TM PDF format may contribute to meeting the needs of high-end color reproduction. The purpose of the project was to determine whether the PDF 1.2 format is capable of achieving the high-end color requirements of today's pre-press industry. The methods used to test the PDF 1.2 format are described, and the results discussed. For all the features tested it was found that the results were equivalent to using PostScript, and the suitability of the format for high-end color reproduction was confirmed.

Digital color imaging has developed over the past twenty years from specialized scientific applications into the mainstream of computing. In addition to the phenomenal growth of computer processing power and storage capacity, great advances have been made in the capabilities and cost-effectiveness of color imaging peripherals. The majority of imaging applications, including the graphic arts, video and film have made the transition from analogue to digital production methods. Digital convergence of computing, communications and television now heralds new possibilities for multimedia publishing and mobile lifestyles. Color engineering, the application of color science to the design of imaging products, is an emerging discipline that poses exciting challenges to the international color imaging community for training, research and standards.

Color is an essential part of information handling. Computer science (informatics) students usually do not get a formal education in color science, but show interest in self-study of the subject. Hypertext and multimedia presentations can be used with advantage in such situations. A CD-ROM based self- study manual has been prepared for informatics students to teach them color science. The tutorial is built up by starting with some general errors, recommendations for good practice and links to guide the students to more profound understanding of the underlying colorimetric knowledge and functioning of display hardware systems.

The graphic arts industry is increasingly reliant on telecommunications for the transfer of digital data for media production. There are, however, many other aspects of the business process between customers and suppliers that are suited to network-based interaction. The transaction between customer and producer can be separated into four data streams: briefing, content creation and production, and approval. Each of these data streams has specific requirements which lead to a matrix of needs for the different parties in the transaction. These needs are reviewed and proposals made for meeting them through a network service dedicated to the graphic arts. British Telecom, MCI and Scitex are currently beta-testing a service based on these proposals, known as the Digital Graphic Network. Once a managed network service is in place, it is possible to extend it to include a range of other services and third-party interactions, such as automated transfer of media production objects such as high-resolution images, fonts, color profiles, etc. from third-party content providers. The opportunities for users and third-party developers to develop a custom interface between the network and internal production processes and monitoring systems using open systems based on the Java language is described.

The production process in graphic arts can be divided in several work- or dataflows, which fundamentally differ. One deals with the creation and modification of content, i.e. photographing a scene, modifying text, retouch of pictur data, etc. The other attempts to generate, organize, and manage contextual information which can e.g. be of design, technical (screening, color definition), administrative (customer, invoice info) or product specific information (desired paperstock, finishing) character. In the paper under view those workflows are closer examined. It is shown that the creation of genres (generic product prototypes like books, flyers, etc.) may in certain cases be used to simplify both workflows. It may also be used to generate information required for both content creation (like layout) and technical purposes. The approach presented discusses a method to create a publication dependent on the information which genre is to be addressed. The concept is based on the reuse of intermediate products or of output data. For the implementation of the concept we introduce the fundamental workflows involved and an architecture containing some of the important elements required. In a final part a first overview of the implementation of the concept is given. It turns out that the job ticket, the design of the page elements and the layout are the crucial factors in a genre based production.