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Color AIXchange – Design and Recolouring with Faithful Data The Multispectral Imaging System delivers faithful colour images of arbitrary objects. However, for some applications the technology is not applicable directly. For instance, in fashion photography, it will not be possible to capture images of living models with a multispectral scanner. This type of photographs will be taken with ordinary RGB cameras and, as a result, every image will have to be colour-corrected manually. However, it is possible to capture the garments, or at least a fraction of them, before the model wore them. To fill this gap, the “Color AIXchange” Photoshop® Plug-In has been developed. It is an extension module for Adobe® Photoshop® and allows the transfer of faithful colours from a digital colour reference image to another image, which is usually a photograph. Figure 9:         Screenshot of Color AIXchange Photoshop Plug-In The workflow is as follows: Digital colour reference images can be captured multispectrally of all garments to be photographed. This can be done even before the garments are shipped to the photo session location, so that when the photos are ready for retouching, work can begin immediately. The multispectral images must be stored as Lab TIFF files, so they can be read in Photoshop. First, the photograph is opened in Photoshop, and then the piece of garment to be recoloured is selected (by masking etc.). Then, Color AIXchange is chosen from the Filter menu, and a digital reference image is opened within the Plug-In. A region is selected on the reference image in order to determine the reference colour. Likewise, a region is selected on the photograph to determine the location, where the reference colour shall be transferred originally. Then, the colour is immediately transferred to the entire, selected garment piece, while the original structure of the garment on the photograph is maintained. The user has several parameters to influence the kind of colour transfer. For example, it is possible to adjust the brightness between the value of the original and the reference colour. The user can adjust the local contrast, and limit the range of colours to be modified to a certain hue, or exclude highlights and shadows from modification. Moreover, a very important aspect is the artistic component within a photograph. Particularly pictures taken in nature, maybe at a beach shortly before sunset, contain a considerable amount of “mood”. If the colours of a whole garment were completely forced to the reference colour, the entire mood would be gone. As a result, the photograph would contain faithful colours, but would probably not attract many buyers. For this reason, the “Keep Mood” slider was introduced, which allows to keep a variable amount of the original “mood”, i.e. of the variations caused by coloured light. A typical setting for strongly moody images is a 50% setting. Reference Colours can be collected in “Lab Color Libraries”. E.g. it is possible to put together libraries of skin colours, sky colours, wood colours, etc. Color AIXchange can be used for any application, where colours are to be transferred from one image to another. A major application is surely the retouching of images for mail order catalogues. Advantages: Saving of labour time with the retouching process Saving of time within tight seasonal schedules (reference images can be captured offline) More consistent retouching results even with less experienced persons Transfer of the work to other sites/countries Colour samples (unique!) do not need to leave the mail order house Saving of shipping costs