Abstract: A graphical user interface provides for interactively modifying, on the user's display, the appearance of a palette of colors on one or more hardcopy output devices. The interface provides a graphical representation of a color space in a color space window on the user's display and draws each color in the palette in its current location in the color space, thereby showing the relationship of each color in the palette with other colors in the palette. The interface stores all color representations as device independent color specifications. The user interface stores a plurality of colorimetrically measured colors representing the gamut of one or more target hardcopy output devices, and displays the boundaries of a selected device gamut in the color space. The user manually controls the appearance of a color on an output printer device by moving a color from a current location outside the target gamut to a destination location inside the gamut. The user may also edit the color's lightness signal. A gamut clipping process ensures that the modified color is producible in the target gamut. When the user moves a color from inside a displayed target gamut to outside the gamut, a gamut constraining process prevents the color from being moved beyond the boundaries of the gamut. The user may flexibly and conveniently display and edit the palette of colors in any of several color spaces available, one of which is the uniform CIELAB color space. Modifications to palette colors are stored for future use.

US.Class: 395131 395140

IPC: G06T00500

US Patents Cited: 4488245 4694286 4721951 4958220 4972257 4985853 5264927