The client is The AIMES Centre (Advanced Internet Methods and Emergent Systems), part of the University of Liverpool, and a pioneer in the transfer of e-science to e-business. It focuses on the application of 'grid technology' to real business needs and on the ability to create new business ventures capable of delivering those business solutions.
The main goal of a project was to create a color calibrating product. Calibration problems occur because every computer monitor shows particular colors in a different way. Even basic colors can look dramatically different when viewed on different computers or screens. If the same image is viewed on two different display devices, the colors are likely to appear dissimilar due to the different physical characteristics and/or the different contrast/brightness settings of the two display devices. This problem, namely to communicate color veridically across different platforms, is often addressed by color calibrating a display device with specialized calibration.
The point of color calibration is to adjust the colors of one output device to match that of another. The device that is to be calibrated is commonly known as calibration source; the device that serves as a comparison standard is commonly known as calibration target, and future program had to perform the function of displays calibration appropriately.
The solution is a Web-based color calibration tool. The calibration process is managed at the Web server side. The calibration process is performed within the Web browser of the user. Our developers created an applet for that purpose that is compatible with the leading Web browsers (at least MS Explorer, Netscape, Opera and Mozilla Firefox). The results of each calibration process are stored at the server side. Two account types with different privileges are supported: Normal user and Administrator. A single Administrator account is set up by default, the details of which are communicated to the project manager as soon as possible.
The Normal users have access to the web site in order to register, perform the color calibration process, upload images and view images. The Administrator users are able to perform all the actions described for the Normal users as well as specific advanced actions. These advanced actions include management of user accounts, management of the uploaded images and most importantly access to the color calibration process configuration server side.
The second aspect of the implementation deals with the color calibration process itself. The color calibration process comprises the Web pages and Applets used to perform color tests, as well as the analysis of data collected, the derivation of the transformation matrix and the application of the transformation matrix to color images.
