Research project: A Universal Representation of Surface Colours

Did it ever happen to you that you bought a t-shirt in a shop, and when you came home and looked at it under another light, its colours looked off? The problem is that the colours of things (objects and materials) depend on two physical properties: the spectra of illuminating light and the spectral surface properties of the object or material. To date, there is no satisfactory way to specify surface colours in a way other than full spectral information. Here, we develop a sparse approach to characterise spectral properties with just a few numbers. Our “sparse spectra” will be of great use to a wide range of colour research and application in art and industry.

Principal investigator: Dr Christoph Witzel