Color definiton of open-air Architectural heritage and Archaeology artworks with the aim of conservation

• Published in: Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 2017-12, Vol.7, p.10-31
• Main Authors: Apollonio, Fabrizio I., Gaiani, Marco, Baldissini, Simone
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 3D reality-based modeling; Archaeological Heritage; Architectural Heritage; Color calibration; Color quality assessment; Color reproduction accuracy; Pipeline color management
• ISSN: 2212-0548; 2212-0548
• DOI: 10.1016/j.daach.2017.09.002

The color survey of Architectural and open-air Archaeological artefacts represents a difficult operation due to a lot of factors such as subjective aspects of visual perception, objective characteristics relating to sources of lighting and the way one watches something. The paper describes a method for 3D reality-based color managed modeling, aimed to render reflectance properties of artifacts with perceptual fidelity on many type of display. The method is based on an accurate color management system, from acquisition to visualization, in order to be used within a 3D acquisition pipeline, allowing simultaneous processing of color and shape data. The developed techniques are easy, low-cost, fast and could produce visually accurate images and 3D model, and, in order to avoid inaccuracies, a systematic quality control on the images acquired and 3D models rendered has been introduced. Results are presented about both processing accuracy and final 3D models visualization. The color survey, usually, refers to three methods, which are not able to ensure the correct perception of color on an RGB monitor or its faithful reproduction on a print support, and to assure a right color checking on a wide surface, and with a non-uniform color. The presented workflow and specific solutions appear today a good compromise between fidelity of reproduced data and ease of use of the developed tools. •Color definition using 3D reality-based models, starting from RGB images.•Fidelity of color reproduction, using automatic pipeline.•Reuse of old (previous) images data set to compare actual state and previous state.•Color quality assessment, using color metric standards.