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

  • From: Graeme Gill <graeme@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: argyllcms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 23:11:40 +1100

Milton Taylor wrote:

So where does that leave us? What does that gamut chart you just plotted actually mean? That we can see virtually any emitted colour if it's strong enough?

It means what you want it to mean. It's an "absolute" boundary, the "absolutely widest range of colors we can see between 380 and 700 nm". The way it's been derived (setting Y = 100) also shows a limitation of the CIE CMF model though, since it doesn't encapsulate practical limits such as "too bright" (that information is elsewhere.)

What happens if you redrew the gamut to also limit the maximum energy at any hue to something like the maximum typical brightness of an LCD? (Say 250 cd/m2) knowing full well that this would only happen in practice if you did something like discussed below?

Not sure. You'd have to pick a white point brightness, and the gamut would depend on the two numbers you've picked, making it a non absolute boundary (and therefor disappointing to those who would like to know what the "speed of light" is).

If you went with this approach, wouldn't the more extreme colours look brighter than white?

They shouldn't if they are derived from a normal source gamut.

> Wouldn't that be perceptually rather confusing? Or
would this idea have to be used with some subtlety so that the perceptual effect was preserved?

It stops working if you aren't adapted to the lower brightness white point.

As for the technicalities, there are two issues there...firstly as you would probably know Windows doesn't use profiles for its own rendering, only it's video LUTs, so you'd have to also fiddle with those too in some similar fashion. This would have to mean that White=256,256,256 input, but output is 128,128,128. Other colours could possibly generate individual channel output values > 128.

No, it would limit all colors, thereby defeating the effect. You would need a video card that could support different video LUTs in different window regions. I don't think these are very common (or the windowing software doesn't support this either.)

Secondly, re the windows fullscreen thing, I'm not worried about that because I'm assuming you'd be previewing full screen anyway, like in Photoshop's full screen mode. Which also does use the profile to adjust what you're seeing.

Right, so it might be possible to experiment with this idea in that manner.

Of course, in theory the same effect could be created with printed output
as well, but the viewing conditions are even harder to create. You'd
have to be in quite a dark room (as in a low reflective surface on
absolutely everything, including yourself), so that you didn't adapt to
something lighter than the artificially "dull" white point of the print,
and of course you have to be shielded from any direct light from the illuminant.
(sort of a "bright shaft of light only falling on the print" effect in a dark 
room).

Graeme Gill.


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