ΔEITP is now ITU-R BT.2124-is the industry ready to move on from ΔE2000?

For many years, ΔE2000 has been considered the industry standard for estimating perceptual color differences and evaluating the color accuracy of display technologies. Recently, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) released Recommendation ITU-R BT.2124, which defines a new metric, ΔEITP, as the new standard for evaluating perceptual color differences. Given this new recommendation, it is important that we become familiar with how ΔEITP performs in practice and what can be expected when using it in existing workflows. A key part in this process is having an understanding of the properties of the color space that the color difference metric is based on and how that relates to the intended application of the metric. In this paper, we explore this relationship as it pertains to the ΔE2000 and ΔEITP color difference metrics, specifically in the context of evaluating color reproduction on self-luminous displays. Simulated data and measured data from calibrated displays are used to compare the metrics' performance. Given that ΔE2000 and ΔEITP are based on significantly different derivation principles, there are notable differences that must be acknowledged between these two metrics, especially as we transition between them. It is highly likely that ΔE2000 has been underpredicting perceptual color differences, significantly so when used for the evaluation of high dynamic range (HDR) and wide color gamut (WCG) displays.

Published

2019-10

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Color difference metric, ΔE2000, ΔEITP, ICTCP, CIELAB, calibration, high-dynamic-range, wide-color-gamut

DOI

10.5594/M001879