in).
The chart is commonly called “Macbeth,” owing
to its original developer and manufacturer. Macbeth does not have a
capital B.
The chart is described in this paper:
McCamy, C.S., Marcus, H., and Davidson, J.G., "A Color Rendition Chart,"
Journal of Applied Photographic Engineering 11(3) (Summer
issue, 1976), 95-99.
There
used to be a “Digital ColorChecker (DCC).” It
turned out to be unreliable; it's now discontinued. There's
a “Digital ColorChecker Semi Gloss (SG)”; it offers
140 colour and grey patches, including (near the centre) the
original 24 ColorChecker patches.
Here's
a subtlety concerning colour reproduction.
Everyone documents the colours that are produced from the chart
under whatever illuminant you use. But imaging systems almost
invariably introduce tone and colour mapping to make images look
right when displayed (as is usually the case) much less bright and
with lower contrast ratio than is typical at capture. When captured
or reproduced, the luminance and chromaticity values should not be
expected to match the camera's or scanner's stimuli! For more about
this, see Perceptual uniformity, picture rendering, image state,
and BT.709.
X-Rite does not publish spectral reflectance data for the
ColorChecker. (Spectral data is however available from
Gretag for its big brother, the ColorChecker DC.)
The ColorChecker used to come with an insert sheet containing
colorimetric data, referenced to Illuminant C.
I have entered, checked, and double-checked the
data on that sheet. The Hue, Value, and Chroma columns are in
Munsell notation. (I made a minor
editorial change: I indicate Munsell chroma value
of zero for the grayscale patches.)
No
Name
CIE_x
CIE_y
CIE_Y
Hue
Value
Chroma
ISCC_NBS_Name
1
dark skin
0.400
0.350
10.1
3 YR
3.7
3.2
moderate brown
2
light skin
0.377
0.345
35.8
2.2 YR
6.47
4.1
light reddish brown
3
blue sky
0.247
0.251
19.3
4.3 PB
4.95
5.5
moderate blue
4
foliage
0.337
0.422
13.3
6.7 GY
4.2
4.1
moderate olive green
5
blue flower
0.265
0.240
24.3
9.7 PB
5.47
6.7
light violet
6
bluish green
0.261
0.343
43.1
2.5 BG
7
6
light bluish green
7
orange
0.506
0.407
30.1
5 YR
6
11
strong orange
8
purplish blue
0.211
0.175
12.0
7.5 PB
4
10.7
strong purplish blue
9
moderate red
0.453
0.306
19.8
2.5 R
5
10
moderate red
10
purple
0.285
0.202
6.6
5 P
3
7
deep purple
11
yellow green
0.380
0.489
44.3
5 GY
7.1
9.1
strong yellow green
12
orange yellow
0.473
0.438
43.1
10 YR
7
10.5
strong orange yellow
13
blue
0.187
0.129
6.1
7.5 PB
2.9
12.7
vivid purplish blue
14
green
0.305
0.478
23.4
0.25 G
5.4
8.65
strong yellowish green
15
red
0.539
0.313
12.0
5 R
4
12
strong red
16
yellow
0.448
0.470
59.1
5 Y
8
11.1
vivid yellow
17
magenta
0.364
0.233
19.8
2.5 RP
5
12
strong reddish purple
18
cyan
0.196
0.252
19.8
5 B
5
8
strong greenish blue
19
white
0.310
0.316
90.0
N
9.5
0
white
20
neutral 8
0.310
0.316
59.1
N
8
0
light gray
21
neutral 6.5
0.310
0.316
36.2
N
6.5
0
light medium gray
22
neutral 5
0.310
0.316
19.8
N
5
0
medium gray
23
neutral 3.5
0.310
0.316
9.0
N
3.5
0
dark gray
24
black
0.310
0.316
3.1
N
2
0
black
You can access the table in tab-separated-value (tsv) format
(1414 bytes). If you import this file to Excel
(v.X, at least), it will silently take the Munsell hue
"5 P" of purple and replace it with
5:00 PM or 17:00:00 or some such (!), and it will
silently delete trailing zeros in numeric quantities.
Macbeth was once its own company; it was acquired by Kollmorgen
Corporation, which was (I guess) acquired by
Gretag, who then started calling themselves GretagMacbeth (spelled
all in one word), who merged with X-Rite, and the company is (at
the date of writing) called X-Rite. ColorChecker is one word (not
Color Checker, and not Colour Checker).
See also:
DSC Labs
devel;ops and manufactures professional charts used in video, HDTV,
and digital cinema
Danny
Pascale has quite a comprehensive page on the
ColorChecker, including access to spectral
reflectance data. He has also written a document, RGB coordinates of the Macbeth ColorChecker
(327,578 Bytes, PDF format)
CIE 1976 L*a*b*, D50, 2°
No.
Name
L*
a*
b*
1
Dark skin
39.07
13.7
14.37
2
Light skin
66.36
18.08
18.56
3
Blue sky
50.66
-4.84
-21.44
4
Foliage
44.03
-13.01
22.34
5
Blue flower
55.87
8.88
-24.79
6
Bluish green
71.47
-32.98
0.65
7
Orange
62.37
36.05
56.58
8
Purplish blue
40.77
9.18
-43.58
9
Moderate red
51.68
48.21
16.75
10
Purple
31.27
20
-20.83
11
Yellow green
72.74
-22.6
57.15
12
Orange yellow
72.35
19.57
68.76
13
Blue
29.61
13.63
-49.65
14
Green
55.61
-37.19
31.81
15
Red
42.23
55.32
27.45
16
Yellow
82.65
4.44
80.52
17
Magenta
52.55
49.33
-14.42
18
Cyan
52.24
-28.24
-27.14
19
White
96.37
-0.3
3.26
20
Neutral 8
81.7
-0.56
0.25
21
Neutral 6.5
66.49
-0.33
0.03
22
Neutral 5
50.67
-1.06
-0.19
23
Neutral 3.5
36.23
-0.48
-0.26
24
Black
20.68
0.17
-0.55