IES publishes TM-30 defining new color metrics for characterizing lighting

The Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) has published a new Technical Memorandum — TM-30-15 entitled "IES Method for Evaluating Light Source Color Rendition" — that promises to supplant CRI as a color metric. TM-30 relies on separate fidelity and gamut metrics, as well as a set of color samples that is more representative of real-world objects as opposed to the pastel samples that were primarily used for the baseline CRI metric that was sometimes called Ra. The new color metric is intended to fairly and accurately characterize both LED-based solid-state lighting (SSL) and legacy sources.