EMPA Media Technology

Color, Print, Image, Reproduction, Publication

The media technology laboratory of EMPA is concerned with production processes in the modern cross media industry. Our mission is to bring significant research results to their practical realization as innovative products and applications. The long-standing good relations with the graphic arts industry allow us to keep in touch with the market and technology trends. In our industrial cooperations we usually address international standards like ICC Color Management, ISO 12647, PDF/X or PDF/A. Our research includes the characterization, modeling and visualization of color and images as well as geometrical, statistical or algorithmic aspects of applications. Topics covered by current projects are:

• measurement of color
• optimization of printing
• device characterizations
• halftoning
• document formats like LaTeX, PostScript, PDF, PDF/X and PDF/A
• font technology
• gamut mapping
• color separation
• computational image quality
• computational geometry as tool for color engineering
• psychovisual testing and its mathematical analysis
• illustration and visualization
• scanning
• OCR in the context of mass-digitizations
• object recognition in materials research
• speech and video indexing

Lectures on color science and digital publishing are held at ETH Zürich. In regard to semester, master or doctorate theses we cooperate with various national and international colleges and universities. Our publishing activities are focused on conferences and journals in the scientific imaging community.