Comparison of chromatic adaptation transforms used in textile printing sample preparation

As image-capturing devices, such as scanners or digital cameras, normally describe data in RGB colour space, it is impossible to get a complete raw spectral description of a sample's colour. Device characterisation enables conversion of RGB values to corresponding XYZ tristimulus values of a sample. For transformation of tristimulus values from one illuminant to another, chromatic adaptation transforms should be used. Within our research, chromatic adaptation transforms were implemented in the field of digital textile printing of textile substrate with reactive dyes. Five chromatic adaptation transforms were investigated and their performance was assessed with cluster analysis. Results showed that the lowest mean colour differences were generated with the D50-D65 illuminant pair, followed by D50-A and D65-A. The same performance ranking of different chromatic adaptation transforms was obtained for both D50-A and D65-A illuminant pairs. The Bradford method showed the best results irrespective of the examined illuminant pair combination.