The SpAIXscan Multispectral Imaging System delivers faithful colour images of arbitrary objects. However, for some applications the technology is not applicable directly. For instance, in fashion photography, it will not be possible to capture images of living models with a SpAIXscan. This type of photographs will be taken with ordinary RGB cameras and, as a result, every image will have to be colour-corrected manually.

However, it is possible to capture the garments, or at least a fraction of them, before the model wore them. To fill this gap, the “Color AIXchange” Photoshop® Plug-In has been developed. It is an extension module for Adobe® Photoshop® and allows the transfer of faithful colours from a digital colour reference image to another image, which is usually a photograph.

The workflow is as follows: Digital colour reference images can be captured multispectrally of all garments to be photographed. This can be done even before the garments are shipped to the photo session location, so that when the photos are ready for retouching, work can begin immediately. The multispectral images must be stored as Lab TIFF files, so they can be read in Photoshop.

First, the photograph is opened in Photoshop, and then the piece of garment to be recoloured is selected (by masking etc.). Then, Color AIXchange is chosen from the Filter menu, and a digital reference image is opened within the Plug-In. A region is selected on the reference image in order to determine the reference colour. Likewise, a region is selected on the photograph to determine the location, where the reference colour shall be transferred originally. Then, the colour is immediately transferred to the entire, selected garment piece, while the original structure of the garment on the photograph is maintained.

The user has several parameters to influence the kind of colour transfer. For example, it is possible to adjust the brightness between the value of the original and the reference colour.

Moreover, a very important aspect is the artistic component within a photograph. Particularly pictures taken in nature, maybe at a beach shortly before sunset, contain a considerable amount of “mood”. If the colours of a whole garment were completely forced to the reference colour, the entire mood would be gone.

Reference Colours can be collected in “Lab Color Libraries”. E.g. it is possible to put together libraries of skin colours, sky colours, wood colours, etc.