Special Issue: The Physics of Digital Color

Images have always been the best mode of communication between people, but technologies such as the typewriter have long made text easier to reproduce than images. As a result of two separate, but closely related, revolutions in technology, however, digital color images are now becoming commonplace. First, the practical use of digital technology in imaging could not have come about without the tremendous gains made over the past 20 years or so in the speed and capability of digital computers and peripherals, coupled with continuous reductions in cost for equivalent performance. Second, in the last few decades our understanding of the physics and chemistry underlying the technologies of scanning, displaying and printing color images has vastly improved; at the same time we have seen tremendous developments in related manufacturing techniques.