Near-infrared photoluminescence of orange color standards – then and now

The presence of near-infrared (NIR) photoluminescence has been recently reported in some of the second series of Ceramic Color Standards (CCSII) that are widely used in the calibration and performance evaluation of color measuring instruments. The impact of this photoluminescence effect can cause significant colorimetric errors particularly for broadband measurements using a detector with high spectral responsivity in the NIR region. The magnitude of this effect has been demonstrated for specific color standards and specific instrument systems but has not been unambiguously quantified to allow general predictions or absolute comparisons of different instrument designs or different ceramic tiles. Here we present absolute NIR photoluminescence measurements on three different formulations of the CCSII orange ceramic color standard using the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) Reference Spectrofluorimeter whose spectral range has been recently extended to 1000 nm. The validation for this extended spectr...