Abstract:
Users of optical see-through head-mounted displays (OHMD) perceive color as a
blend of the display color and the background. Color-blending is a major
usability challenge as it leads to loss of color encodings and poor text
legibility. Color correction aims at mitigating color blending by producing
an alternative color which, when blended with the background, more closely
approaches the color originally intended. To date, approaches to color
correction do not yield optimal results or do not work in real-time. This
paper makes two contributions. First, we present QuickCorrection, a real-time
color correction algorithm based on display profiles. We describe the
algorithm, measure its accuracy and analyze two implementations for the
OpenGL graphics pipeline. Second, we present SmartColor, a middleware for
color management of user-interface components in OHMD. SmartColor uses color
correction to provide three management strategies: correction, contrast, and
show-up-on-contrast. Correction determines the alternate color which best
preserves the original color. Contrast determines the color which best
warranties text legibility while preserving as much of the original hue.
Show-up-on-contrast makes a component visible when a related component does
not have enough contrast to be legible. We describe the SmartColor’s
architecture and illustrate the color strategies for various types of display
content.