[argyllcms] Calculating film LUTs for a film recorder
- From: Philip Pemberton <philpem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: argyllcms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2012 01:42:55 +0100
This probably counts as the weirdest question I've ever asked here, but
I'm going to ask it anyway :)
A while ago I managed to pick up a Polaroid HR-6000 film recorder.
Basically, it's a white CRT, an RGB filter wheel and a 35mm (or Polaroid
packfilm) camera and a controller board with a SCSI port.
Image data is sent from the host (PC, Mac, whatever) as a {x}*{y}*3
array of bytes (usually 4096x2732xRGB for 35mm). This data is fed to an
8:8 translation LUT (which converts a byte to a byte, thus allowing
PseudoColor images to be printed without applying the palette data), and
then on to an 8:11 LUT which converts the final pixel values into an
exposure level value for that colour channel.
The problem is, all the LUTs I have are for ancient and long-obsolete
film stock. I'd like to create some new ones for more modern films (i.e.
stuff I can still buy - Fuji FP100C packfilm is my main target).
I can load a linear LUT into the printer and expose a piece of film to
whatever image I like, then measure the density levels (either with my
Xrite 890 or the flatbed scanner -- colour calibrated with a Wolf-Faust
target). The problem is... how would I go about turning the "exposure
value E produced density D" data (I think this might count as a
Hurter-Driffield curve) and converting it into a LUT?
Can I do this with Argyll? If not, then what algorithms should I be
looking at implementing?
All the curves I've decrypted and dumped seem to follow the same format:
a steep rise at the beginning, a pseudo-linear ramp, and a second steep
rise towards the end. I get the impression this is somehow an inverse of
the H-D curve, but I have no idea how to calculate it... About four
hours of Google searching hasn't revealed anything useful :(
Thanks,
--
Phil.
philpem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.philpem.me.uk/
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