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EXPLORING THE COLOR GAMUT
by Abhay Sharma, Ph.D.
Whenever you read a review of a new printer or a
discussion on inkjet inks, inevitably gamut will be mentioned somewhere
in the article. But what exactly is a device gamut, and how do
we use it? A gamut is defined as the range of colors that a device
can create. People use different terminology—color gamut,
device gamut, or simply gamut—but they all mean the same
thing. The gamut is basically a way of representing the range of
colors a printer can print or the range of colors a monitor can
display. This article describes what gamut is, and how it may differ
for different inkjet printers and different printing conditions,
such as matte paper vs. photo quality paper.
Device gamut
A device gamut is best represented as a three-dimensional volume.
To plot a device gamut you may use the CIE LAB system. The LAB
system is a way to numerically specify a color by its position
within a three-dimensional space. Another CIE system you may
encounter is CIE Yxy. The spacing of colors in the Yxy system
is not optimum, i.e. the colors are not well distributed. In
this article, we’ll avoid using Yxy, instead concentrating
on plotting the gamut in terms of LAB.
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