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The CIE System

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Handbook of Visual Display Technology

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Abstract

Colorimetry is a branch of color science concerned with numerically specifying the color of physically defined stimuli such that two stimuli that look the same (under certain criteria) have identical specifications. The Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) developed a system for the specification of color stimuli that was recommended for widespread use in 1931 and that has formed the basis of colorimetry for the last 80 years. This chapter briefly describes the development of the CIE system and explains key principles (such as additive color mixing and Grassman’s laws) upon which the system is based. Specification of color by tristimulus values is described and the importance of chromaticity diagrams is discussed.

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Further Reading

  • ASTM E308-01 (2001) Standard practice for computing the colors of objects by using the CIE system. ASTM International, West Conshohocken. www.astm.org, doi:10.1520/E0308-01

  • Fairchild MD (2005) Color appearance models. Wiley, New York

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  • Fairman HS, Brill MH, Hemmendinger H (1997) How the CIE 1931 color-matching functions were derived from Wright-Guild data. Color Res Appl 22(1):11–23

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hunt RWG (1998) Measuring colour, 3rd edn. Fountain Press, London

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  • Kuehni RG (2003) Color space and its divisions. Wiley, Hoboken

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  • Ohta N, Robertson AR (2005) Colorimetry fundamentals and applications. Wiley, New York

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  • Publication CIE No. 15.2 (1986) Colorimetry, 2nd edn. Bureau of the Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage, Vienna

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  • Publication CIE No. S2 (1986) Standard colorimetric observers. Bureau of the Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage, Vienna

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  • Westland S, Ripamonti C (2004) Computational colour science using MATLAB. Wiley, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wyszecki G, Stiles WS (1982) Color science – concepts and methods, quantitative data and formulae, 2nd edn. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Colour Science & Technology, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, Leeds, UK

    Stephen Westland

Authors
  1. Stephen Westland
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephen Westland .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Industrial Technology Research Institute Display Technology Center, Hsin Chu, Taiwan

    Janglin Chen

  2. Nottingham Trent University School of Computing & Informatics, Nottingham, United Kingdom

    Wayne Cranton

  3. Veritas et Visus, Temple, TX, USA

    Mark Fihn

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© 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Westland, S. (2015). The CIE System. In: Chen, J., Cranton, W., Fihn, M. (eds) Handbook of Visual Display Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35947-7_11-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35947-7_11-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-35947-7

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