Uwe Artmann and Dietmar Wüller (Image Engineering) - Reiner Fageth (CeWe Color AG)
Abstract
The analysis of images has always been an important aspect in the quality enhancement of photographs and photographic equipment. Due to the lack of meta data it was mostly limited to images taken by experts under predefined conditions and the analysis was also done by experts or required psychophysical tests.
With digital photography and the EXIF1 meta data stored in the images, a lot of information can be gained from a semiautomatic or automatic image analysis if one has access to a large number of images. Although home printing is becoming more and more popular, the European market still has a few photofinishing companies who have access to a large number of images.
All printed images are stored for a certain period of time adding up to several million images on servers every day. We have utilized the images to answer numerous questions and think that these answers are useful for increasing image quality by optimizing the image processing algorithms.
Test methods can be modified to fit typical user conditions and future developments can be pointed towards ideal directions.