Expanding the color gamut of inkjet textile printing during color matching

AbstractOne of the most important subjects of digital printing is evaluation of color gamut mapping. A printer can only reproduce colors that are in its color gamut. Maybe, a color tolerance between reference sample and printed sample is in agreement between manufacturer and customer. The goal of this work is to estimate the expansion of the color gamut of an inkjet textile printer by consideration of the acceptable (predetermined) color difference during color matching. For analyzing the color gamut, a standard color chart IT8.7/4‐2005 CMYK target was printed by nine different mixtures of CMYK, and then the reflectance spectra and colorimetric parameters of the printed samples were measured. The inks used were disperse water‐based inks that were printed on the polyester fabric. The maximum acceptable color difference in this study was equal to 2 CIELAB units for all colors. In order to estimate the color gamut with the maximum acceptable color difference, for all boundary points of gamut, expanded points were obtained by Euclidean distance less than  = 2. The results show that when the acceptable color difference is considered in color gamut measuring, the area and volume of the color gamut are increased and so, the reproducibility of printer is increased. The maximum and minimum expansions of color gamut volumes were obtained by the mixtures with minimum and maximum color gamuts, respectively. The volume expansion of the mixture with the minimum color gamut volume was 34.20%, while the volume expansion of the mixture with the maximum color gamut volume was 28.06%.