Visual gamma correction for LCD displays

An improved method for visual gamma correction is developed for LCD displays to increase the accuracy of digital colour reproduction. Rather than utilising a photometric measurement device, we use observers’ visual luminance judgements for gamma correction. Eight half tone patterns were designed to generate relative luminances from 1/9 to 8/9 for each colour channel. A psychophysical experiment was conducted on an LCD display to find the digital signals corresponding to each relative luminance by visually matching the half-tone background to a uniform colour patch. Both inter- and intra-observer variability for the eight luminance matches in each channel were assessed and the luminance matches proved to be consistent across observers (ΔE00 < 3.5) and repeatable (ΔE00 < 2.2). Based on the individual observer judgements, the display opto-electronic transfer function (OETF) was estimated by using either a 3rd order polynomial regression or linear interpolation for each colour channel. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by predicting the CIE tristimulus values of a set of coloured patches (using the observer-based OETFs) and comparing them to the expected CIE tristimulus values (using the OETF obtained from spectro-radiometric luminance measurements). The resulting colour differences range from 2 to 4.6 ΔE00. We conclude that this observer-based method of visual gamma correction is useful to estimate the OETF for LCD displays. Its major advantage is that no particular functional relationship between digital inputs and luminance outputs has to be assumed.

Research highlights
► In this paper, a visual gamma correction method for LCD display was developed incorporates with two widely used colour characterisation models.
► The method was performed by a psychology experiment that conducted by a large number of subjects.
► The main novelty of this study is that we test its performance for different lightness levels and evaluate its accuracy in the context of observer variability.
► Based on experiment, factors that affect the performance of gamma correction are discussed and summarised.