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Basic question regarding Color Spaces, Color Models, and Gamuts.

 
Author desmondqford
ZRO
#1 | Posted: 17 Jul 2012 20:47 
I often hear people using the terms Color Space and Color Model interchangeably. However, if I understand correctly, they are two different things. Please advise as to the accuracy of the following statements which sum up my understanding of these concepts...

A Gamut, simply put, is a range of possible colors. It could be 10 million colors or just 10 colors. So if you had a box full of acrylic paint tubes and you decided to pick out 10 of them, then that would be your gamut. You'd have a 10 color gamut to work with.

A Color Model is like a mapping and/or naming convention for colors. It's basically a way of organizing and notating colors, or building a color design, like the Munsell system which is a color model, not a color space, right?

Sticking with the paint tube analogy, a Color Model is a like a blank "Paint By Numbers" canvas. You see the outlines of an image, with numbers or notations inside dictating which color belongs where. So you apply your gamut to this color model and voila, you have a color space which is something you can use to make informed and deliberate selections from which to chose colors.

Therefore: Color Model + Gamut = Color Space

So, when you add a specific gamut or range of colors to a mapping system, you have a very well organized set of colors to work with and chose from, which is called a color space. This is very useful for digital images...

Is this right, or am I completely off? I'd really appreciate it if anyone could shine some light on these concepts for me. Many thanks.


Dezzy

Author Steve

INF
Male
#2 | Posted: 17 Jul 2012 20:55 
Gamut is the 'colour range' a specific system can show or work with.
Not the number of colours within that gamut. 1000 colours or 100 colours can define the same gamut.
What will be different is the granularity of the colours that can be displayed within the given gamut.

If you download the demo of LightSpace and look at the gamut CIE diagram within the Calibration Interface you can see the different gamuts plotted on the CIE diagram.

Cheers, Steve
Steve Shaw
Mob Boss at Light Illusion

Author desmondqford
ZRO
#3 | Posted: 18 Jul 2012 00:36 
Got it, so that explains Gamut! Thanks for the reply, Steve.

Question... So for a Color Model to embrace a gamut, the gamut must already be represented on a device of some sort. Then the Color Model is basically a software application that picks and choses how and where to represent each color within a device's range or capability?

Any suggestions on further reading? Thanks again.


dezzy

Author Steve

INF
Male
#4 | Posted: 18 Jul 2012 12:21 
Yep, that's about it.

There's some fun here: http://www.efg2.com

Steve
Steve Shaw
Mob Boss at Light Illusion

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 Basic question regarding Color Spaces, Color Models, and Gamuts.

 

 
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