Back in the 1950s, when color TVs were invented, things were simple. TVs came in color or black and white, and you could tell which was which right away. Today, you can find TVs and monitors that somehow promise than color, but what does that mean? And why do manufacturers use confusing terms like color space and color gamut to explain it? Let’s break it down.
Chances are, you’ve seen the terms “color space” or “color gamut” while Buy a TV with high dynamic rangebut you will also see them popping up around some computer screenespecially those designed for gaming. Sometimes manufacturers will say that the monitor covers a certain percentage of a specific color space, like DCI-P3 or Rec. 2020.
If none of these words mean anything to you then it is maybe It’s fine if you ignore them. All most people really need to know is whether their display supports HDR—a significant upgrade for color displays that can produce more than a billion colors in bright, vivid details. But if you edit a lot of media or want to get the most accurate color reproduction possible, here’s how to explain all the technical terms.
What is color gamut?
As you may recall from high school science class, color is simply the way our delicate human eyes perceive different wavelengths of light. The spectrum of wavelengths we can see is just a small subset of the spectrum. entire electromagnetic spectrum. So a color display will display all the colors that the human eye can see. Right?
Well, not really. In fact, every screen you’ve ever seen only displays a small fraction of the colors your eyes can perceive. That fraction is called the “color gamut.” The color gamut refers to the range of colors in the visible light spectrum that the screen is capable of reproducing.
You may not see any missing colors on your monitor because you see most colors as close to correct, but there are certain colors simply cannot display. For simple comparison, SDR (standard dynamic range) TVs are capable of displaying over 16.7 million colors—more specifically, there are 16.7 million distinct combinations of 256 different levels of red, green, and blue that the display can produce.
HDR TVs, on the other hand, are capable of displaying at least 1,024 different levels of red, green, and blue, with more than 1.07 Billion unique color combinations. This dramatically expands the range of visible light spectrum that the display can reproduce. But it also means that everything you see on your screen—every show, movie, or video game—has to be created with those new color options.
What is color space?
The term “color space” refers not just to a range of colors, but also to a specific way of organizing colors in a way that device manufacturers can reference and support. For example, sRGB color space used to specify the 16.7 million colors that most SDR displays and TVs have produced for many years.
Most of these color spaces are defined in part by their relationship to CIE 1931 color spacequantifies all the colors the human eye can see. There are many other color spaces out there that define a subset of these colors, with some being used to define colors for purposes like printing. When shopping for a monitor or TV, there are a few major color spaces worth looking at:
