Display Color Gamuts Shoot-Out

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The spaces Adobe RGB, sRGB, Don RGB, ECI RGB, ProPhoto or the one on my screen, on my printer are RGB color spaces for photographers. Their equivalents for videographers are DCI-P3 (slightly smaller than Adobe RGB) and REC 709 (very close to sRGB). Adobe RGB (1998) is red plot, DCI-P3 is Green. View: original size. View: original size. There are some areas of color space one is larger than the other, and vise versa.

NTSC toRec.2020

Dr. Raymond M. Soneira

President, DisplayMate TechnologiesCorporation

Copyright © 1990-2016 by DisplayMateTechnologies Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

This article, or any partthereof, may not be copied, reproduced, mirrored, distributed or incorporated

into any other work withoutthe prior written permission of DisplayMate Technologies Corporation

Introduction

The Color Gamut defines the range of colors that a display can produce –so it is the most important defining visual characteristic of any display.While Color Gamuts have changed over the years, in the past virtually alldisplays needed just a single Gamut to produce all of the content that a userwanted to see. But with the recent development of several new larger ColorGamut standards for producing new content, including DCI-P3 for 4K Ultra HD TVs and Digital Cinema, all futureTVs, Monitors, Smartphones, Tablets and Laptops will need to support at leasttwo Color Gamuts. We’ll explain how that’s done with Color Management.

So there is a big learning curve for consumers, reviewers, contentproducers, and even manufacturers on the proper use of the new Color Gamuts. In this article we will examine and compare some of themost important Display Color Gamuts that have been appearing in consumer products over thelast 60+ years, from the earliest NTSC Gamut up through the latest DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 Gamuts. The Gamuts have been evolving and gettingprogressively larger...

Display Color Gamuts and Standards

Over the years there have been an incredibly wide range of Color Gamutsthat have been implemented on displays. Many are simply based on the particularnative primary colors conveniently available at the time at low cost fordifferent display technologies like CRT, Plasma, LCD, OLED, LED, Quantum Dots,phosphors, lasers, etc. Many applications just need any suitable range ofcolors to satisfy a user’s needs. However, essentially all imaging basedapplications need a specific well defined Color Gamut in order to accuratelyreproduce the colors in the image content. Over the years this has given riseto many different standard Color Gamuts for the current image content, and theyhave generally been based on what the currently existing displays at the timecould produce. So both the displays and content have evolved together overtime, and many different Color Gamuts have been defined, but they are not allcreated equal...

What makes a Color Gamut important and a true Standard is the existenceof lots of content created specifically for that Gamut so manufacturers thenneed to include that Standard in their products. So it is the content andcontent producers thatdefine a true Color GamutStandard – the displays then need to deliverit as accurately as possible on-screen. Every display needs to adapt its nativeColor Gamut for the content that it has to show. This is implemented usingColor Management, which we discuss below.

While people primarily think of Color Gamuts in terms of their outermostsaturated colors, most image content is generally found in the interior regionsof the Gamut, so it is particularly important that all of the interior lesssaturated colors within the Gamut be accurately reproduced.

And if you are not sure of the set of colors that the different Gamutsactually produce, we will show you accurately Colorized versions of the two most important Standard Gamuts beingused today so you can evaluate them visually. In case you think you havealready seen Colorized Gamuts before, the colors shown in essentially allpublished Color Gamuts are fictitious and wildly incorrect. We have accuratelycalculated them here.

Color Gamuts and Ambient Light

One very importantpoint that applies to all displays is the Color Gamut that you actually seeon-screen is reduced by any existing ambient light falling on the screen. Sincevery few users watch their displays in absolute darkness (0 lux) the visibleColor Gamut that is actually seen is noticeably less than 100 percent. Weexamine this very important effect and its solution in our 2014Innovative Displays and Display Technology article.

NTSC Color Gamut

The first official Color Gamut Standard for displays was the NTSC Color Gamut, whichmade its debut in 1953 for the beginning of US color television broadcasting. But the NTSC primary colorswere too saturated and couldn’t be made bright enough for use in the consumer(CRT) TVs of that era, so the NTSC Color Gamut was Never actually used forvolume commercial production of color TVs. As a result, the NTSC Gamut was Never really an actualStandard Color Gamut, and there is essentially no consumer content based on thetrue NTSC Color Gamut. Which is amusing (and annoying) because now more than 60years later many manufacturers and reviewers are still quoting and referring tothe NTSC Gamut as if it were some sort of state-of-the-art standard, when ithas been obsolete and colorimetrically disjoint from most other standard Gamutsfor an incredibly long time – we’ll demonstrate why below.

Manufacturers of high-tech products should be embarrassed for publishingtheir specifications in terms of NTSC, an obsolete 60+ year old technology! So please everyone, let’s stop referring to the veryoutdated NTSC and instead move on to the actual Color Gamuts that are beingused in today’s displays. But before we bury it, we’re going to show you whatthe NTSC Color Gamut looks like in Figure 3 below together with many of the current Color Gamuts,which we’ll cover in turn below...

The Real Analog TV and Standard Definition TV Color Gamuts

Instead of the official NTSC Gamut colors, the practical phosphor colorsthat were actually used in early color TVs were developed by the ConracCorporation, which eventually became the SMPTE-C Color Gamut Standard. TV production studios used Conraccolor monitors to produce their broadcast TV content, so it was the Conrac Color Gamut ratherthan the NTSC Gamut that was the real color television Standard Gamut. TheSMPTE-C Gamut is not that different from today’s sRGB / Rec.709 Gamut, which is13 percent larger than SMPTE-C. Many later Gamut standards were based on SMPTE-C,including up to Rec.601 for Digital Standard Definition TV. We are now going toskip over lots of history and get to the Display Color Gamuts that are in usetoday...

sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut

For over 10 years the main Color Gamut that has been used for producingvirtually all Current consumer content for digital cameras, HD TVs, theinternet, and computers, including photos, videos, and movies is a dualstandard called sRGB / Rec.709. If you want to see accurate colors for this content onjust about any consumer product, then the display needs to match the sRGB /Rec.709 Standard Color Gamut – not larger and not smaller, because the colorswill then appear wrong and also be either too saturated or under-saturated.

There are still widely held beliefs by lots of reviewers and consumersthat viewing content on a display with a larger Color Gamut is actually better,but it is definitely worse because the display cannot produce colors that arenot present in the original content, so the colors are just shown distorted andover-saturated. We include the Standard sRGB /Rec.709 Gamut in Figures 3 to 6.

Below we’ll show you both visually and quantitatively what the sRGB /Rec.709 Color Gamut looks like in both the 1976 and 1931 CIE Diagrams.

Accurately Matching the Color Gamut Standard

For reasons similar to what occurred long ago with the NTSC Gamut, upuntil recently a reasonable fraction of all displays could not produce 100percent of the sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut, particularly for mobile displays,which in many cases provided less than 70 percent of the sRGB / Rec.709 Gamutbecause of similar brightness and efficiency issues that had plagued the NTSCGamut. As a result, their on-screen images appeared somewhat bland andunder-saturated. But today most good quality products have displays thatproduce close to 100 percent of the sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut.

And similar issues also apply to the newest and largest Color Gamuts,DCI-P3 and Rec.2020, which we examine in detail below. 4K UHD TVs only need toprovide 90 percent of the DCI-P3 Color Gamut Standard to receive a 4K UHD Alliance certification,and the currently available Rec.2020 displays typically only provide 90 percentof the Rec.2020 Color Gamut Standard. So it has always taken some time fordisplays to fully and properly implement the latest Color Gamut Standards.However, that introduces color errors that reduce the Absolute Color Accuracy ofthe displayed content, which we discuss below.

Adobe RGB Color Gamut

Most high-end digital cameras have an option to use the Standard Adobe RGB Color Gamut,which is 17 percent larger than the Standard sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut that isused in consumer cameras. The Adobe RGB Gamut is also used in many otheradvanced and professional imaging applications. It has a more saturated GreenPrimary than the sRGB / Rec.709, which accounts for all of its larger Gamutsize. For consumers, Samsung’s Galaxy Smartphoneand GalaxyTablet OLED displays accurately produce the Adobe RGB Gamut as covered inour Mobile Display TechnologyShoot-Out article series. We include the AdobeRGB Gamut in Figure3 below.

DCI-P3 Color Gamut

The newest Standard Color Gamut that has significant content is DCI-P3, which is 26 percentlarger than the sRGB / Rec.709 Gamut. It is being used in 4K Ultra HD TVs andin Digital Cinema for the movie industry, so while the amount of existingDCI-P3 content is still relatively small compared to sRGB / Rec.709, it is nowstarting to grow rapidly. DCI-P3 is also being adopted in many other newdisplays and applications that want to provide a larger Color Gamut with awider range of more saturated colors. We recently tested the new Apple iPad Pro 9.7,which has a very accurate native 100% DCI-P3 Gamut, and it also produces a veryaccurate 100% sRGB / Rec.709 Gamut by using Color Management, which we discussbelow. We include the Standard DCI-P3 Gamut in Figures 3 and 6.

Color Spectra

Displays (and everything in nature) all produce their color bycontrolling and varying the amount of energy from different wavelengths oflight. The color sensations that we all see are produced entirely within thebrain from electrical signals produced by the eye from the wavelengthdistributions of light it receives. The CIE Color Diagrams that we show belowrelate the wavelength distributions to the colors that we see. So a good way tocompare Display Color Gamuts is by first examining their light spectra.

To see how different the DCI-P3 Color Gamut is from sRGB / Rec.709, Figure 1 below compares thewhite light spectrum of an Apple iPad Pro 9.7that has a native DCI-P3 Gamut, with an Apple iPad Air 2that has a native sRGB / Rec.709 Gamut. Note how much narrower and more widelyspaced the DCI-P3 Primary Colors are, which results in more saturated Reds andGreens. We include the DCI-P3 Gamut in Figures 3 and 6 below.

Figure1. Spectrum Comparing DCI-P3 and sRGB / Rec.709 Gamuts

Rec.2020 Color Gamut

The next generation Standard Color Gamut will be the impressively large Rec.2020 standard, shown inFigures 2 and 3below. In fact, it is 72 percent larger than sRGB / Rec.709 and 37 percentlarger than DCI-P3. The Color Gamut is extremely wide and the Color Saturationextremely high. However, there is almost no current existing content forRec.2020. And there are very few existing displays that come close to providingRec.2020, which requires QuantumDots for LCDs. Of course, continuing progress is being made in extendingthe Color Gamuts for both LCD and OLED displays, so Rec.2020 will become animportant new Standard Gamut within the next several years.

To see how incredibly challenging Rec.2020 is, Figure 2 below compares thewhite light spectrum of a Vizio R65 TV (courtesy of Nanosys, which makes the Quantum Dots)that has about 90 percent of the Rec.2020 Gamut, with an Apple iPad Pro 12.9that has a native sRGB / Rec.709 Gamut. Note how narrow and widely spaced theRec.2020 Primary Colors are, and how far the Red Primary is. resulting insignificantly more saturated colors. We include the Rec.2020 Gamut in Figure 3 below.

Figure2. Spectrum Comparing Rec.2020 and sRGB / Rec.709

Comparing the Standard Color Gamuts

Figure 3 below shows the Color Gamutsfor most of the Standards that we have been discussing. They are all plotted ona CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity (Color) Diagram that quantitatively evaluates color in a perceptuallyuniform manner for human color vision with (u’,v’) color coordinates. All ofthe color regions and visual differences between colors remain consistentthroughout the entire 1976 CIE Color Space, so it provides an excellent andaccurate method for specifying, manufacturing, marketing, comparing, measuring,and calibrating displays.

Note that the older 1931 CIE Diagrams, with (x,y) color coordinates, that are published by manymanufacturers and reviewers are very non-uniform and distorted, so they areeffectively meaningless for quantitatively evaluating Color Gamuts and theirColor Accuracy. The Color Gamuts shown in Figure4 would appear very different in the 1931 CIEDiagram. We’ll examine this in detail for the sRGB / Rec.709 Gamut below.

To get a better understanding for what the Color Gamuts actually producewe’ll show you below accurately Colorized versions of the two most importantGamuts being used today.

In all of the CIE Diagram Figures below, the outermost white curve is the limits of humancolor vision – the horseshoe is the pure spectral colors and the diagonal isthe Line of Purples connecting Red and Blue at the extreme ends of human colorvision. Green is between Red and Blue in the spectrum, and is on the extremeleft in the CIE Diagrams. The Colorized Gamuts in Figures 4 to 6 below willshow this visually for one Color Gamut at a time.

A given display can only reproduce the colors that lie inside of thetriangle formed by its three Primary Colors, which are always based on Red,Green, and Blue, following the eye’s own spectral color response. The largerthe Color Gamut the greater the range of colors that can be produced. Somedisplays have more than three primary colors. In such cases the Color Gamut isthen defined by a polygon. Sharp’s Quattron for example, includes a fourthYellow (non-standard) primary that actually improves the display’s brightnessand efficiency more than enlarging the Gamut as seen from Figure 3.

When content is being produced, colors that are outside of the content’sColor Gamut move automatically to the closest available color and no longerexist and cannot be recovered later by using a larger Color Gamut. So thehighly saturated colors outside of the Color Gamut are still reproduced butwith lower color saturation.

Standard Color of White

The Standard Color of White for almost all current Color Gamut standardsis called D65,which is the color of outdoor natural Daylight at noon with a Color Temperature close to6500K, is marked in the Figures below as a white circle near the middle. Todeliver accurate image colors a display must match the same Color Gamut andalso the same Color of White that was used to create the content.Unfortunately, many displays accurately reproduce the Color Gamut, but then usean inaccurate (typically too blue) White Point, which then introduces coloraccuracy errors throughout the entire inner regions of the Color Gamut.

Color Gamut Size Comparisons in Terms of Area

A common metric for comparing the relative sizes of the Color Gamuts isby using their relative areas within the Uniform 1976 CIE Diagram. The relativeGamut sizes that are calculated from the non-uniform 1931 CIE Diagram aresignificantly different and are compared in a later section below.

The Adobe RGB Color Gamut is 17 percent larger than sRGB / Rec.709.

Adobe Gamma

The DCI-P3 Color Gamut is 26 percent larger than sRGB / Rec.709.

The Rec.2020 Color Gamut is 72 percent larger than sRGB / Rec.709 and37 percent larger than DCI-P3.

And for those of you still interested in NTSC Gamut statistics:

The NTSCColor Gamut is 98 percent of the Adobe RGB Color Gamut. So while they are both very close in Gamutarea and size, note how very different their triangular Gamut shapes and colorregions are in Figure 3, proving that the stillcurrent practice of using NTSC for Gamut specifications and comparisons haslittle colorimetric meaning or useful quantitative value for the current Gamutsand displays (and doubly wrong when combined with the non-uniform 1931 CIEColor Space).

Color Gamut Comparisons in Terms of Just NoticeableColor Differences JNCD

A better metric for evaluating the new larger Color Gamuts is by howdifferent their Primary Colors are in terms of visual Just Noticeable Color Differences JNCD from the Standard sRGB/ Rec.709 Primary Colors, calculated using the Uniform 1976 CIE Diagram, wherevisual color differences are proportional to the linear distances between anytwo colors in the Diagram. Figure 4 shows the distances corresponding to 1 JNCDand 3 JNCD, with 1 JNCD = 0.0040 in the (u’,v’) 1976 Uniform Color Space. The1931 CIE Color Space cannot be used for JNCD because it is Non-Uniform.

For Adobe RGB the Green Primary is 12.8 JNCD from sRGB / Rec.709.

For DCI-P3 the Red Primary is 11.4 JNCD and the Green Primary is 7.6 JNCD fromsRGB / Rec.709.

For Rec.2020 the Red Primary is 26.5 JNCD, the Green Primary is 18.4JNCD, and the Blue Primary is 9.0 JNCD from sRGB / Rec.709.

So the Visual Color Differences between the Color Gamuts are quitelarge, very noticeable, and significant.

Figure3. Standard Color Gamuts Plotted on a CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram

Next we’ll examine accurately Colorized versions of the sRGB / Rec.709and DCI-P3 Color Gamuts to visually examine and quantitatively compare theirColor Spaces.

Accurately Colorized sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut

Figures 4 and 5 below show an accuratelyColorized sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut. For displays this can only be done for a single ColorGamut at a time. The colors in the Figure have been accurately calculated toshow the real colors within the sRGB / Rec.709 Gamut – the colors shown in mostpublished Color Gamuts are fictitious and wildly incorrect. Also included are41 Reference Colors that we use for measuring the Absolute Color Accuracythroughout the entire Gamut, which is discussed below.

Note that printed versions of the Colorized Gamuts depend on theparticular inks being used and also their spectral absorption of the particularambient light you are viewing them in, so they cannot be as accurate as anemissive display, and they also generally provide smaller Gamuts than mostdisplays.

In order to see the actual accurate colors in the Colorized Gamut, yourdisplay must be set to the sRGB / Rec.709 Standard (that is found on mostrecent Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops, Monitors, and Full HD TVs for example) orsupport active Color Management. Otherwise, the colors will be incorrect, andmuch too saturated if you are watching on a DCI-P3 UHD TV or display asdiscussed below.

Note that every colorwithin the Gamut is shown at its maximum Brightness (Luminance). White is thebrightest color near the middle because it is the sum of the Peak Red, Green,and Blue Primary Colors. The Secondary Colors of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellowradiate from the White Point as ridges because they are the sums of two PrimaryColors.

One particularly interesting result seen inFigure 4 is howrelatively small the Green region of the sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut is in theaccurate 1976 CIE Uniform Color Space, accounting for just 10 percent of thetotal Gamut. However, the Green region is rendered 2.4 times larger in thedistorted and Non-Uniform 1931 CIE Chromaticity Diagram, as shown in Figure 5 below. The newerColor Gamuts: Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, and Rec.2020 all significantly enlarge theGreen region of their Color Space within the Uniform 1976 CIE Diagram.

Figure4. Accurately Colorized sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut with Reference Colors

Absolute Color Accuracy and Just Noticeable ColorDifferences JNCD

One very important issue is the accuracy of each display’s Color Gamuts,and the Absolute Color Accuracy for all of the colors within the entire Color Gamut. Onevery important reason for accurately Colorizing and rendering each Color Gamutin the 1976 CIE Uniform Color Space is that the display’s Color Accuracy andColor Calibration can be accurately analyzed uniformly, and then the true Color Errors uniformlyminimized for all of the colors within the Color Gamut. The errors areexpressed in terms of Just Noticeable Color Differences JNCD, which correspond to fixed linear distances within theCIE Diagram. Figure 4 shows the distances corresponding to 1 JNCD and 3 JNCD,with 1 JNCD = 0.0040 in the (u’,v’) 1976 CIE Color Space.

For each tested display we measure the Absolute Color Accuracy of 41Reference Colors, which are shown for sRGB / Rec.709 in Figure 4. For a goodexample, see this color accuracy analysis for both the DCI-P3 and sRGB /Rec.709 Color Gamuts in the AppleiPad Pro 9.7, which includes a more detailed discussion of JNCD.

In our DisplayAbsolute Color Accuracy Shoot-Out article we show the colors for a widerange of facial skin tones and fruits and vegetables so that you can get a goodidea of where these important colors fall within the 1976 CIE Diagram.

Accurately Colorized 1931 CIE Diagram for the sRGB / Rec.709Color Gamut

The best way to demonstrate the large differences between the 1976Uniform and the older 1931 Non-Uniform CIE Diagrams is to show an accurateColorized sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut for both of them side-by-side in Figure 5. Note that for thecomparison both of the Color Triangles have been scaled to have the samegeometric area in the Figures.

Note how differently the colors are distributed within each Color Space. The obsolete but still widely used 1931 CIE Diagram has avery non-uniform Color Space that significantly expands the Green region (by alarge factor of 2.4 in area) and significantly compresses the Blue Region (by alarge factor of 1.7 in area), providing a very distorted representation ofhuman color perception. The Red regions are only 7 percent different in area,but note how different their shapes are.

Specifying and analyzing displays in terms of the very non-uniform andvery distorted 1931 CIE Color Space introduces significant performance,calibration and color accuracy errors. Many manufacturers also specify theirguaranteed display color accuracy in terms of the non-uniform (x,y) 1931 CIEcoordinates, which results in large variations and differences in color accuracythroughout the Color Space.

The 1976 CIE Diagram transforms and corrects the distortions in theoriginal 1931 version to produce a Uniform Color Space that accurately rendershuman color perception and color accuracy. It'sabout time that manufacturers and reviewers abandon the obsolete 1931 CIE ColorSpace for all of the above reasons!

Figure5. Accurately Colorized Comparisons of the 1976 and 1931 CIE Color Spaces

Inaccurate Color Gamut Comparisons in terms of the 1931 CIEDiagram:

Note that the relative differences between the Color Gamuts that we showabove are based on the 1976 CIE Uniform Chromaticity Diagram. Somemanufacturers and reviewers still specify their Color Gamuts by using thehighly non-uniform 1931 CIE Diagram that greatly exaggerates and stretches therelative differences between the Color Gamuts, so those comparisons are veryinaccurate and essentially meaningless.

The Color Gamut size comparisons that are calculated and specified bymany manufacturers using the 1931 CIE Diagram are also very inaccurate and verymisleading. For example, in the non-uniform 1931 CIE Color Space the Adobe RGB Color Gamut is 35percent larger than sRGB / Rec.709, more than double the accurate 17 percentvalue listed above from the 1976 CIE Uniform Color Space. And in the 1931 CIEColor Space the DCI-P3 Color Gamut is 36 percent larger than sRGB / Rec.709, a 38percent size exaggeration compared to the accurate 1976 CIE value of 26 percentlarger.

These large discrepancies prove that using the 1931 CIE Color Space forspecifications and comparisons has little colorimetric meaning or usefulquantitative value for current displays. Manufacturers should be embarrassedfor specifying their products in terms of the obsolete and very misleadingnon-uniform 1931 Color Space!

Accurately Colorized DCI-P3 Color Gamut

Figure 6 below shows an accurately Colorized DCI-P3 Color Gamut.For displays this can only be done for a single Color Gamut at a time. Thecolors in the Figure have been accurately calculated to show the real colorswithin the DCI-P3 Gamut – the colors shown in most published Color Gamuts arefictitious and wildly incorrect.

In order to see the actual accurate colors in the Colorized Gamut, yourdisplay must be set to the DCI-P3 Standard (on a 4K UHD TV or Apple iPad Pro 9.7for example) or support active Color Management. Otherwise the colors that yousee will be incorrect. They will all appear significantly under-saturated ifyou are watching on a sRGB / Rec.709 display as discussed above.

Note that every colorwithin the Gamut is shown at its maximum Brightness (Luminance). White is thebrightest color near the middle because it is the sum of the Peak Red, Green,and Blue Primary Colors. The Secondary Colors of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellowradiate from the White Point as ridges because they are the sums of two PrimaryColors.

Figure6. Accurately Colorized DCI-P3 Color Gamut

Differences Between the DCI-P3 and sRGB / Rec.709 Gamuts

Figure 7 below shows an accurately Colorized DCI-P3 Color Gamutwith an inscribed sRGB / Rec.709 Gamut in order to show the differences betweenthe two Gamuts.

If your display is set to DCI-P3 then the colors both inside and outsideof the sRGB / Rec.709 triangle will be accurate, so you can see what the newset of more saturated colors in the DCI-P3 Gamut provide. If your display isset to sRGB / Rec.709 then the colors will all appear as less saturated sRGB /Rec.709 Gamut colors, however, you will still get an idea of how much largerthe DCI-P3 Color Gamut actually is.

Important New Saturated Green and Red Color Regions

Note how much larger the Green region in the DCI-P3 color space is incomparison to sRGB / Rec.709, by 52 percent. The extreme Reds have also beensignificantly expanded. Based on the measurements in our Absolute ColorAccuracy Shoot-Out, most fruits and vegetables are found in the mostsaturated Red to Orange to Yellow to Green regions of the Color Space (so theyvisually attract animal attention for eating and spreading their seeds), andthe most highly saturated colors are also heavily utilized in lots of humangenerated content in order to get people’s visual attention, so the enlargedRed to Green sliver in the DCI-P3 Color Space is actually very important.

Figure7. Comparing the sRGB / Rec.709 and DCI-P3 Color Gamuts

An Accurately Colorized Rec.2020 Color Gamut

Itis still premature for us to generate an accurate Colorized Rec.2020 ColorGamut at thistime because there are currently very few displays that come close to providingRec.2020, and there is almost no current existing content for Rec.2020. As aresult, a Colorized Rec.2020 Color Gamut would appear just like the smallernative Color Gamut of your current display. And printed inks are also unable toreproduce the highly saturated Rec.2020 colors.

Whenthings advance a bit further, we’ll revisit the entire topic of Display Color Gamuts...

Color Management for Multiple Color Gamuts

When a display needs to support one or more additional Color Gamuts likesRGB / Rec.709 that are smaller than its native Color Gamut, that can be accomplished withdigital Color Management performed by the firmware, CPU or GPU for the display.The digital R,G,B values for each pixel in an image being displayed are firstmathematically transformed so they colorimetrically move to the appropriatelower saturation colors closer to the White Point. The available Color Gamutscan either be selected manually by the user, or automatically switched if thecontent being displayed has an internal Tag that specifies its native ColorGamut, and that Tag is recognized by the display’s Operating System orfirmware. The Apple iPadPro 9.7 implements Color Management that automatically switches between theDCI-P3 and sRGB / Rec.709 Gamuts.

Another more advanced color management approach is for the content toinclude meta-data with detailed specifications for the colorimetry of thecontent, and then it is up to the display to implement it as accurately aspossible using its native Color Gamut colorimetry and photometry.

Summary and Conclusion

Our overview of Color Gamuts from the earliest NTSC Gamut to the latestDCI-P3 and Rec.2020 Gamuts has demonstrated the importance of eliminating thewidespread use of the obsolete 1953 NTSC Gamut and the obsolete 1931 CIEDiagram in the display industry. Switching to current display technologystandards is now tremendously overdue.

Adobe Rgb Color Test

The 1953 NTSC Gamut was never actually used for production displays, andis colorimetrically different from current standard Gamuts, so it is misleadingto use as a Reference Gamut. The 1976 CIE Diagram transforms and corrects thelarge distortions in the original 1931 Diagram to produce a uniform color spacethat accurately renders human color perception and color accuracy.

Switching to current colorimetry standards is not only essential forproperly specifying, measuring, manufacturing and accurately calibratingdisplays, but also for comparing and marketing them to both productmanufacturers and consumers.

Dr.Raymond Soneira is President of DisplayMate Technologies Corporation of Amherst, New Hampshire, which produces display calibration, evaluation, and diagnosticproducts for consumers, technicians, and manufacturers. See www.displaymate.com. He is a researchscientist with a career that spans physics, computer science, and televisionsystem design. Dr. Soneira obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics fromPrinceton University, spent 5 years as a Long-Term Member of the world famousInstitute for Advanced Study in Princeton, another 5 years as a PrincipalInvestigator in the Computer Systems Research Laboratory at AT&T BellLaboratories, and has also designed, tested, and installed color televisionbroadcast equipment for the CBS Television Network Engineering and DevelopmentDepartment. He has authored over 35 research articles in scientific journals inphysics and computer science, including Scientific American. If you have anycomments or questions about the article, you can contact him at dtso.info@displaymate.com.

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See Russell Brown's 'Colour Managed Printing from PhotoShop' Video (click image below)
Below is a video tutorial guiding you through colour managed print workflows for both Mac OSX and Windows.
Click on the image to run the high resolution video. Quicktime required: Free Quicktime Download

Testing Adobe Rgb Color Monitor

Author: Russell Brown - One of the developers of Adobe Photoshop
View his brilliant tutorials online: The Russell Brown Show

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Srgb Vs Adobe Rgb Test

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