Can you buy a physical chromaticity diagram or color standard showing colors outside monitor gamut?
Asked 8/31/2018
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I’d like a physical reference—such as a printed CIE xy chromaticity diagram or similar color standard—that can show colors my monitor cannot display. Is this something you can buy, and if not, why not? I’m interested in understanding whether a print or other physical object can accurately represent the full chromaticity horseshoe, including highly saturated spectral colors outside common RGB display gamuts.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
7y ago
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It simply isn't possible for any print, which only absorbs light, to produce a colorimetrically accurate and useful reproduction of the CIEXY human gamut "horseshoe."
The curved boundary represents the maximum color saturation. It is the result of a single wavelength of light between about 400nm to 700m. Along the bottom line of the horseshoe, the position on the line is determined by the relative magnitude of two wavelengths combined, 400nm and 700nm.
A print, or any physical, non light emitting object must completely absorb all other wavelengths of light.
Consequently, any continuous spectrum will have all of it's light, except those single wavelengths removed and thus won't produce a visible result.
As one moves from the horseshoe boundary inward, colors decrease in saturation and the maximum possible luminance a color can have increases. Luminance being the value of Y in linear space or, traditionally, L*, in CIELAB.
The theoretically possible saturation limits for colors at varying degrees of luminance are called Macadam Limits. Colors at those limits are known as "Optimal Colors." These are not actually physically possible since they require infinitely sharp and absolute frequency cutoff's as well as 100% in the passband. They are best thought of as a theoretical limit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut#/media/File:Optimal-color-solid,FL4,XYZ.gif
However, using emissive light one can produce colors anywhere within the CIEXY gamut by, for instance, using 2 lasers with wavelengths on the CIEXY boundary where the desired color lies on a line between the two boundary points. Adjusting the relative power of each laser determines where on the line the reproduced color occurs.
Originally by user58107. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user58107
7y ago
0
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Not in the way you’re hoping. A printed chart cannot accurately reproduce the full CIE chromaticity horseshoe, because the outer boundary represents highly saturated spectral colors produced by narrow bands of emitted light. Prints and other reflective objects only subtract wavelengths from the illumination falling on them; they do not emit arbitrary single wavelengths.
So while you can find colored chromaticity diagrams in books or online, they are only illustrative. They are not colorimetrically accurate maps of human-visible color, and can even be misleading. Color appearance also depends on viewing conditions and adaptation, so a given CIE x,y point does not correspond to one fixed visual appearance in all contexts.
In practice, gamut can be extended somewhat with better papers, inks, or multi-ink printing systems, but no ordinary print can reproduce the full visible gamut or the spectral locus accurately.
If you want a true demonstration of those colors, you need a self-luminous system capable of producing very narrowband light across the visible spectrum, not a print. For shopping purposes, look for color target charts or monitor calibration tools rather than a “full chromaticity print.”
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