Testing color reference charts for the herbarium digitization purposes

Abstract

The current paper represents the continuation of the testing of the budget photosystems for herbarium digitization and aims to demonstrate the color reproduction accuracy besides other colorimetric characteristics of five color reference targets. It was shown that cheap color reference targets of Charttu can be applied for digitization purposes, at least in the brand-new condition. However, the color degradation of Charttu targets during use should still be evaluated. At the same time, the color accuracy of the X-Rite Color Checker Classic Mini was found to be highly degraded after several years of careful and non-intensive use. The Golden Thread Object Level target was found to be the best solution for herbarium digitization and the most resistant to color degradation, even in intensive and long use.

Keywords

• herbarium digitization
• image quality assessment
• color reference
• color checker
• delta E
• delta L