“Complete study of traditional Thai colors used in mural paintings: Traditional Thai Color Name Dictionary” is published online in Early View by Wiley and Sons

by Pichayada Katemake on November 3, 2013
After 6 months of reviews and one revision, the article mentioned in my previous post, was accepted and is already published online at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/col.21843/abstract
Below are some comments written by reviewers:
"This paper is worth to publish in that it brings back the forgotten colors of one culture. Especially, based on the more detailed and improved methodology, it also presents reasonable methods for investigating traditional colors."
"This article presents a research about identification of traditional Thai colours for restoration of mural paintings. The beginning of this research was published online in CRA in November 2011: “Identification of traditional Thai colours used for mural paintings and Khon masks”. The article we review completes this previous one with an improved identification method and by adding some data. The improved identification method describes the use of a scanner to calculate the average L*a*b* color of a painting that is inhomogeneous, and the way to match it automatically with Munsell patches and NCS dictionary. This part is interesting and described in details. It could be useful for the numerous people who ever wished to turn their scanner into a colorimeter. The other main data added to the previous publication is the Thai colour name dictionary chapter, where are described color names, with explanation about structure of Thai language and colors that were identified or not. This part is interesting as this work was never done before and is important for history and art memory, and it could help for identification in temple and so conservation. The last chapter presents a plan to help painting restoration in situ with photography and application of the Thai color dictionary."
"This work about identification of traditional Thai colors is very important for temple art preservation and has never been done. An important work has been done to retrieve colors corresponding to traditional Thai color names. In this article is explained in details a method to turn a scanner in colorimeter, with most of the tables and references related to the demonstration. As it is an interesting, work, it should be more detailed in a separated article. In the presented article, this scanner work is not mentioned in the title and will not be retrieved by people searching such information."
The research was not aimed to emit abstract theories of unfinished nature just for filling the pages of some article. The aim was declared from the beginning and it consisted in developing a method for analyzing and identifying the traditional Thai colours and producing a Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary. The final output main-points of the research are:
1.the first internationally recognized method for analyzing and identifying traditional Thai Colours, published in Colour Research and Application Journal in 2 articles and in 2 international congress proceeding articles, which can be accessed in our Downloads section;
2.the first ever released Traditional Thai Color Name Dictionary, presenting 147 traditional Thai colour names analyzed, identified, quantitatively described, explained, transliterated and translated, published in Color Research and Application journal;
3.one scientific software named Trichromatic Colour Analyser, described in 30% of the article published in Colour Research and Application journal as part of the improved methodology for analyzing and identifying traditional Thai colours. The software is developed now into a system that is successfully used in other projects.
The article is very long and most of it contains no references because it presents research that has never been done before. The research is finalized and will have no follow-up articles. But I have the intention of writing a book with Dr. Preda, in order to describe extensively and less technically the Traditional Thai Colours. I am also in the process of creating a database, using the natural pigments, dyes and binder indicated by the artists, for assembling recipes through automated matching of calculated colour-mixtures with the identified CIELAB values of the Traditional Thai Colours. Ready-to-use colour paints will be produced with these receips. The work is done in collaboration with the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Fine Art, Silapakorn University and the Fine Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture. 
After 6 months of reviews and one revision, the article mentioned in my previous post, was accepted and is already published online at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/col.21843/abstract
Below are some comments written by reviewers:
"This paper is worth to publish in that it brings back the forgotten colors of one culture. Especially, based on the more detailed and improved methodology, it also presents reasonable methods for investigating traditional colors."
"This article presents a research about identification of traditional Thai colours for restoration of mural paintings. The beginning of this research was published online in CRA in November 2011: “Identification of traditional Thai colours used for mural paintings and Khon masks”. The article we review completes this previous one with an improved identification method and by adding some data. The improved identification method describes the use of a scanner to calculate the average L*a*b* color of a painting that is inhomogeneous, and the way to match it automatically with Munsell patches and NCS dictionary. This part is interesting and described in details. It could be useful for the numerous people who ever wished to turn their scanner into a colorimeter. The other main data added to the previous publication is the Thai colour name dictionary chapter, where are described color names, with explanation about structure of Thai language and colors that were identified or not. This part is interesting as this work was never done before and is important for history and art memory, and it could help for identification in temple and so conservation. The last chapter presents a plan to help painting restoration in situ with photography and application of the Thai color dictionary."
"This work about identification of traditional Thai colors is very important for temple art preservation and has never been done. An important work has been done to retrieve colors corresponding to traditional Thai color names. In this article is explained in details a method to turn a scanner in colorimeter, with most of the tables and references related to the demonstration. As it is an interesting, work, it should be more detailed in a separated article. In the presented article, this scanner work is not mentioned in the title and will not be retrieved by people searching such information."
The research was not aimed to emit abstract theories of unfinished nature just for filling the pages of some article. The aim was declared from the beginning and it consisted in developing a method for analyzing and identifying the traditional Thai colours and producing a Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary. The final output main-points of the research are:
1.the first internationally recognized method for analyzing and identifying traditional Thai Colours, published in Colour Research and Application Journal in 2 articles and in 2 international congress proceeding articles, which can be accessed in our Downloads section;
2.the first ever released Traditional Thai Color Name Dictionary, presenting 147 traditional Thai colour names analyzed, identified, quantitatively described, explained, transliterated and translated, published in Color Research and Application journal;
3.one scientific software named Trichromatic Colour Analyser, described in 30% of the article published in Colour Research and Application journal as part of the improved methodology for analyzing and identifying traditional Thai colours. The software is developed now into a system that is successfully used in other projects.
The article is very long and most of it contains no references because it presents research that has never been done before. The research is finalized and will have no follow-up articles. But I have the intention of writing a book with Dr. Preda, in order to describe extensively and less technically the Traditional Thai Colours. I am also in the process of creating a database, using the natural pigments, dyes and binder indicated by the artists, for assembling recipes through automated matching of calculated colour-mixtures with the identified CIELAB values of the Traditional Thai Colours. Ready-to-use colour paints will be produced with these receips. The work is done in collaboration with the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Fine Art, Silapakorn University and the Fine Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture. 
The article mentioned in my previous post was accepted after 6 months of reviews and one revision and is now already published as early view at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/col.21843/abstract
 
Below are some comments written by reviewers:
"This paper is worth to publish in that it brings back the forgotten colors of one culture. Especially, based on the more detailed and improved methodology, it also presents reasonable methods for investigating traditional colors."
"This article presents a research about identification of traditional Thai colours for restoration of mural paintings. The beginning of this research was published online in CRA in November 2011: Identification of traditional Thai colours used for mural paintings and Khon masks. The article we review completes this previous one with an improved identification method and by adding some data. The improved identification method describes the use of a scanner to calculate the average L*a*b* color of a painting that is inhomogeneous, and the way to match it automatically with Munsell patches and NCS dictionary. This part is interesting and described in details. It could be useful for the numerous people who ever wished to turn their scanner into a colorimeter. The other main data added to the previous publication is the Thai colour name dictionary chapter, where are described color names, with explanation about structure of Thai language and colors that were identified or not. This part is interesting as this work was never done before and is important for history and art memory, and it could help for identification in temple and so conservation. The last chapter presents a plan to help painting restoration in situ with photography and application of the Thai color dictionary."
"This work about identification of traditional Thai colors is very important for temple art preservation and has never been done. An important work has been done to retrieve colors corresponding to traditional Thai color names. In this article is explained in details a method to turn a scanner in colorimeter, with most of the tables and references related to the demonstration. As it is an interesting, work, it should be more detailed in a separated article. In the presented article, this scanner work is not mentioned in the title and will not be retrieved by people searching such information."
 
The research was not aimed to emit abstract theories of unfinished nature just for filling the pages of some article. The aim was declared from the beginning and it consisted in developing a method for analyzing and identifying the traditional Thai colours and producing a Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary. The final output main-points of the research are:
1. the first internationally recognized method for analyzing and identifying traditional Thai colours, published in Colour Research and Application Journal in 2 articles and in 2 international congress proceeding articles, which can be accessed in our Downloads section at www.thaicolour.com;
2. the first ever released Traditional Thai Color Name Dictionary, presenting 147 traditional Thai colour names analyzed, identified, quantitatively described, explained, transliterated and translated, published in Color Research and Application journal;
3. one scientific software named Trichromatic Colour Analyser, described in 30% of the article published in Colour Research and Application journal as part of the improved methodology for analyzing and identifying traditional Thai colours; the software is developed now into a system that is successfully used in other projects.
 
The article is 14 pages long (journal's condensed format) and most of it contains no references because it presents research that has never been done before. The research is finalized and will have no follow-up articles. But I have the intention of writing a book with Dr. Preda, in order to describe extensively and less technically the Traditional Thai Colours.
 
I am now in the process of creating a database, using the natural pigments, dyes and binder indicated by the artists, for assembling recipes through automated matching of calculated colour-mixtures with the identified CIELAB values of the Traditional Thai Colours. Ready-to-use colour paints will be produced with these receips. The work is done in collaboration with the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Fine Art, Silapakorn University and the Fine Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture.

Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary

by Pichayada Katemake on September 9, 2013
This is my first post after more than one year because Dr. Preda and I decided to finish the whole project quietly.
The study on traditional Thai colours is complete now and the Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary is finalized. Initially, I planned to write a series of articles describing separately: the improved method for analyzing the traditional colours, the colour naming study, the Traditional Thai Colour Dictionary and the proposed method for restoring mural paintings using the results of our study. In the same time I was planning to write about the software system developed from the software application that we created for analyzing and identifying the traditional Thai colours. But Dr. Preda convinced me that the importance of research precedes the importance of writing papers. Therefore, we finalized the whole research and merged all results in a single, long article entitled: “Complete Study of Traditional Thai Colours Used in Mural Paintings. Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary”. The article describes the improved method that we elaborated for analyzing and identifying the traditional colours, comparing it with the first method we published in Color Research and Application in 2011. As part of the improved method, our Trichromatic Colour Analyser software is described in 30% of the paper’s length. About half of the paper consists of the Traditional Thai Color Name Dictionary, presenting 147 traditional Thai colour names analyzed, identified, quantitatively described, explained and translated. The paper is submitted to Colour Research and Application journal.
This year, in July, the paper I wrote with Dr. Preda: “Bringing traditional Thai colours to life using an original developed software system” was published in AIC congress proceedings. The paper is focused more on the TCA software system developed from the initial TCA software application that we created as a tool for analyzing and identifying the traditional Thai colours.
This is my first post after more than one year because Dr. Preda and I decided to finish the whole project quietly.
The study on traditional Thai colours is complete now and the Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary is finalized. Initially, I planned to write a series of articles describing separately: the improved method for analyzing the traditional colours, the colour naming study, the Traditional Thai Colour Dictionary and the proposed method for restoring mural paintings using the results of our study. In the same time I was planning to write about the software system that turns scanners into colorimeters, which Dr. Preda and I developed from the software application that we created for analyzing and identifying the traditional Thai colours. But Dr. Preda convinced me that the importance of research precedes the importance of writing papers. Therefore, we finalized the whole research and merged all results in a single, long article entitled: “Complete Study of Traditional Thai Colours Used in Mural Paintings. Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary”. The article describes the improved method that we elaborated for analyzing and identifying the traditional colours, comparing it with the first method we published in Color Research and Application in 2011. As part of the improved method, our Trichromatic Colour Analyser (TCA) software is described in 30% of the paper’s length. About half of the paper consists of the Traditional Thai Color Name Dictionary, presenting 147 traditional Thai colour names analyzed, identified, quantitatively described, explained, transliterated and translated. The paper is submitted to Colour Research and Application journal.
This year, in July, the paper I wrote with Dr. Preda: “Bringing traditional Thai colours to life using an original developed software system” was published in the peer reviewed AIC congress proceedings. The paper is focused more on the TCA software system developed from the initial TCA software application that we created as a tool for analyzing and identifying the traditional Thai colours.
Because it would take too much space even just to mention all the completed steps for reaching this stage, I just announce briefly that the aims of my project have been entirely reached.

TCA helped to identify most of the colours that could not be identified with our first method published in Colour Research and Application.

by Pichayada Katemake on May 5, 2012

On March 19th and April 23rd I had the last 2 meetings with artists. I showed them the rest of the colours that Dr. Preda and I could identify. As usual, the procedure was to show the colours to artists without mentioning the colour names. The artists recognized unanimously 139 colour names within the colours that I showed them and 3 of the artists recognized 8 more colours.

Most of the colour names from our list could be identified with the Trichromatic Colour Analyser. Many of them could not be identified with our previous method and for some other colours we could find better matches by using TCA. The delay of 22 years in completing the Colour Name Identification Project led to the irreversible loss of over 60 traditional Thai colour names, because artists do not know today how some of these colours look like or they disagree on others within unacceptable colour tolerances.

The research is finalized and we will formally submit our papers to academic journals for review by the scientific community. However, the project is far from being ended. The goal is to produce a Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary that can be used in the restoration of Thai mural paintings in the temples. Dr. Razvan Preda and I will develop a method for performing the restorations with the colour names that we identified. The new stages and results will be posted on this website, from time to time.

The digitized NCS dictionary, based on the sRGB values received from "NCS Colour AB", gives very good results in identifying Thai Mural Painting Colours with TCA.

by Pichayada Katemake on March 15, 2012

In my last post I was expressing my doubt that using the NCS sRGB values, obtained from "NCS Colour AB", will give as good results with TCA as the Munsell digital dictionary, which I obtained by scanning the Munsell patches on the same scanner on that I scanned the artist's samples. I was wrong to have this doubt.
On February 13th I met the artists and showed them the Munsell patches found by the software as good matches for the studied colour names. Whenever TCA indicated a NCS code to be a closer match I showed to artists the corresponding NCS patch. Artists confirmed TCA's result, saying that the NCS colour is a better match.
On March 5th I had another meeting with the artists and continued to show them the colours same way I did on February 13th. In some cases, NCS patches gave closer matches than Munsell. In other cases, when the software couldn't find a match in the Munsell dictionary, but could find a match in the NCS dictionary, the corresponding NCS patch was immediately recognized by artists as the identified colour name.
As a result, Dr. Razvan Preda and I would like to add the NCS colour dictionary to the digital database of the distributable version of TCA. However, we don't have yet an agreement with "NCS Colour AB" for doing so. I wiill ask next month, after performing some separate tests with the NCS patches, the conditions under which we can have such an agreement.
The next meeting with artists will be Monday, March 19th.

Digitized Colour Dictionaries implemented in TCA system for identifying Traditional Thai Colour Names.

by Pichayada Katemake on February 11, 2012

This week I finished digitizing the Munsell Book of Color, matt edition with 1350 colour patches, on Epson GT20000 for matching the sRGB colour samples painted by artists, which were scanned on the same scanner.  I already have the sRGB values for the NCS colours provided by “NCS Colour AB" ready to use. Both sets, Munsell and NCS, are integrated now in the TCA software. I’m expecting to obtain the best results with the digitized Munsell patches, because the colorimetric values were produced on the same scanner on which I scanned the samples received from artists. However, the TCA system proved to be quite accurate when using external values and this is a major opportunity to check the system’s accuracy on 2 entire colour dictionaries independently.

Monday, February 13th, artists are invited in my Laboratory for verifying the colours. I will show them the calculated colours resulted from the identification process and the colour matches from the 2 implemented dictionaries and they will have to write down the traditional colour names for the colours they see. I will show them each calculated colour on a calibrated screen and I will also show them the Munsell and NCS patches of the matched colour, without mentioning the colour name for which the respective colour was calculated and matched.  The colours that will pass this test can be added to the Traditional Thai Colour Name Dictionary.

Trichromatic Colour Analyser - the software used for Traditional Thai Colour Name Identification - will be ready soon for distribution.

by Pichayada Katemake on January 5, 2012

Developed initially for our research project of analysing and identifying traditional Thai colours, Dr. Preda and I decided to expand the software system for general use, in order to fill an empty niche in the field of colorimetric analysing tools. Trichromatic Colour Analyser (TCA) is the first distributable system that can turn scanners into colorimeters, offering the advantage of the wide scanner glass that we partially transformed into measurement port.


On December 30th, I had a pre-announced presentation of TCA (which is the first scientific software package ever released by Chulalongkorn University) in front of some colleagues who decided to honour me with their presence and in front of the Head of Department and the Dean of the Faculty of Science. TCA has become now a separate project and will have its own public presentation in January, followed by a product release in March. On January 12th 2012 I will introduce the first final version of TCA system at the "Colour in Life" symposium and from February there will be workgroup sessions and live presentations organized for everyone who would like to test the system or just know more about it.

The main events related to TCA can be checked at: http//www.trichromaticity.com

Natural Colour System will be used in the improved method of Color Identification for Thai Mural Paintings.

by Pichayada Katemake on December 15, 2011

An agreement was signed this week with "NCS Colour AB" for using the Natural Color System (NCS), a proprietary perceptual color model published by the Scandinavian Colour Institute (Skandinaviska Färginstitutet AB) of Stockholm, Sweden.

Many thanks to Per Jutterström and Kennet Vrågård from NCS Colour AB.

Traditional Thai colour name identification. A project that waited for 22 years!

by Pichayada Katemake on December 6, 2011

Thai colour names used for mural paintings and Khon masks are normally known today only among few artists who inherited the knowledge to paint them from their elders. They will be one of Thais lost cultural treasures once these artists disappear.

Traditional Thai paintings have never been restored by matching the original colours and artists cannot quantitatively describe the characteristics of the traditional Thai colour names known to have been used in the original paintings. This is a major impediment in colour identification and preservation studies that are necessary for future restoration works of temples and artifacts.

The first internationally recognized method for identifying, analyzing and preserving traditional Thai colours was developed this year (2011) in the Department of Imaging and Printing Technology of Chulalongkorn University. The article can be accessed online at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/col.20743/abstract

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 The content of this website focuses on the completed research stages of the Thai Colour Naming Project, dedicated to Chulalongkorn University Centenary Celebration.

The stages of the research, as well as any events related to this subject will be posted on this site.

For other colour science research projects, visit the website of the Colour Science Research Unit at http://thaicolour.com

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