Meaning and metrics of the “tone value” in printing technology and standards

Since the early 1990s, the ISO Technical Committee for Graphic Technology has developed and updated several dozen industry standards. Almost every one of them begins with a list of definitions for terms specific to the document.

To date, the series of standards accumulate a dozen variants of very ambiguous interpretations of the concept of tone value, which is the basic parameter for autotypic printing. It creates a problem of adequate translation of international standards and determines the relevance of the analysis of the currently existing contradictory interpretations, as well as the identification of the essential features of this term. In this regard, the concept and parameter "tone value" is considered in the historical context of improving models of illustration printing, considering the multi-stage nature of this process, as well as in solving the problems of color communication in the modern open and unclosed information environment.

The article experimentally and analytically shows the need for more metric-adjusted interpretations and definitions of the parameter versions for a stimulus, for example, brightness Y of the XYZ colorimetric metric of the International Commission on Lighting, or to the extent of impact — lightness L from the Lab of the International Commission on Lighting. The authors establish the fact of an inappropriate percentage expression inherent in the incentive for such a perceptual parameter as the Color Tone Value, which is important for the development of versions of domestic standards based on existing international regulations.

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