Advancements in cinema and display technologies have allowed for wider color gamuts to become realizable. With this, these technologies have the capability to support and reproduce highly-saturated color content. It is important to remember, though, that the ability to produce colors with an extremely-high chroma component is strictly a capability of the technology and not a necessity that the image content must follow. In short, the decision to utilize the expanded gamut available in advanced cinema technologies is at the discretion of the creative forces behind the project. There are a number of different factors that can contribute to the creative color decisions made for motion pictures, with the primary factor being the aesthetic nature of the content produced. Through creative-preference assessments of saturation adjustments in various image content, the value of the expanded color gamut in motion picture mastering was assessed. Three images of comparable chroma histograms were utilized in the study to feature human skin tones, animated characters, and natural scenery, respectively. Upon being adjusted, each image was rendered with color content outside of the boundaries of the DCI-P3 gamut. A two-alternative-forced choice psychophysical study was conducted to estimate observer preference of the saturation levels in each image. From the observers’ selections, the reaction to the expanded image saturation in the three images was plotted and assessed for statistical significance. Through this study, it was found that there is a preference to incorporate colors exclusive to wider color gamuts that extend past the boundaries of Rec. 709 and DCI-P3. It was also confirmed that the medium in which the content was generated has an effect on the level of saturation preferred. Overall, this research provides a look into how technical capability and artistic vision can be connected.
Keywords: cinema, display, wide color gamut, saturation, extremely-high chroma, creative, preference, two-alternative-forced-choice, psychophysical study
Speaker:
Jake Zuena (Dolby Laboratories)
