2001.10.29 22:15 "TIFF L*a*b* encoding", by Martí Maria

Hi,

Joris Van Damme and me have been struggling against the TIFF CIE L*a*b* encoding. All flavors seems clear with one notable exception: 16 bits on Photometric=8. It seems there is a lot of confusion on such format. Surprising Joris has a sample and me another, but both are encoded in totally incompatible way. And what is worst, there is no way to know in advance which encoding to choose.

I must add working with Joris has been a true pleasure. With his commendable modesty, He did a post assuming my sample was right and his one was wrong. However, after thinking a bit on this, we both agree the ICC encoding should be regarded as the correct one. So, many thanks Joris for your great assist!

I will resume here the different encodings:

Lab 8 bits, Photometric=8 (TIFF encoding)

This partially documented on TIFF 6.0, dated June 1992

White point is D65. White point tag DOES NOT apply.

To convert to float

L: divide L by 2.55
a, b: substract 256 if greater that 127

Notes: Photoshop 5.xx does use D50 instead of D65

Lab 8 bits, Photometric=9 (ICC encoding)

This is fully documented on ICC spec, and indirectly documented on Adobe PageMaker ® 6.0 TIFF Technical Notes.

White point is D50. White point tag DOES apply

to convert to float:

L: divide L by 2.55
a, b: substract 128

Lab 16 bits, Photometric=9 (ICC encoding)

This is fully documented on ICC spec, and indirectly documented on Adobe PageMaker ® 6.0 TIFF Technical Notes.

White point is D50. White point tag DOES apply

L, is encoded as unsigned 8.8 fixed point, scaled by 255/100.
a, b are encoded as signed 7.8 fixed point.

To convert to float:

L: divide L by 652.8 (0xFF00 / 100)
a, b: divide by 256 and then substract 128

Lab 16 bits, photometric=8

This is SPECIFICALLY FORBIDDEN in TIFF 6.0 spec, however, Joris and me does have samples using this combination. Unfortunately, they are contradictory. So, somewhat arbitrarily, we have adopted the ICC encoding (equal to Photometric=9) because following reasons:

The technical advantaged of ICC encoding are (among others)

OK, these are our conclusions. However, we would be happy to know if anyone has more samples on this format, or any opinion on how to interpret this stuff.

Regards
Marti Maria.