[argyllcms] Re: sRGB/AdobeRGB98 vs Lab (was Verifying profile quality...)

Frédéric wrote:

Marti Maria (LittleCMS) said that sRGB covers 80% of the colors a human can see. I was very surprised, because sRGB covers only 30% of Lab colorspace (in area), and AdobeRGB98, 50%. I thought that Lab represents all colors a human can see. So, are sRGB/AdobeRGB98 cover nearly all colors, or not ? If not, what are the colors from real world which can't be represented ? 

L*a*b* space contains a large volume of non-real colors. You can't
reproduce 0, 100, 100 for instance, and technically, there
is no limit to the a* and b* values, so the L*a*b* volume is
infinite.

The visual gamut is contained within the spectrum locus,
but it's total extent goes a bit outside the ICC L*a*b*
limits of a* and b* being between -128 and 127.

(I haven't quite figured out how to make a Lab plot of the
 total visual gamut to compare with sRGB or AdobeRGB98, so
 I can't comment about that.)

Graeme Gill.

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