
XYZ is a color space that is derived from basic studies of how the eye and brain sense color. You might ask, “If we specify colors as proportions of red, green and blue, how do you specify the specific primary colors of red, green, or blue used to define the space?” The answer is that you use a fundamental color space, called XYZ, or more formally CIE XYZ. We’ll talk about this further in a future article about gamma. Just know that in this article, when we talk about “RGB” we mean R’G’B’ in the language of color science. This distinction is not as commonly used in the video or computer world, and is beyond the purview of this article. Color scientists reserve “RGB” to refer to non-gamma-corrected (or “linear”) spaces that use red, green, and blue primaries. It’s worth noting at this point that the RGB spaces we use all the time in video and computer displays are more correctly labeled R’G’B’ (pronounced “R-prime, G-prime, B-prime”) by color scientists because they are “gamma-corrected” spaces. There are an infinite number of RGB color spaces, created by varying several parameters, including the specific hue of red, green, and/or blue to be used for the colored dots in the display, the hue of white used, and the specific way the brightness of the dots in the display varies as the numbers fed into the display vary. That method uses the most common kind of color space, the “ RGB” space, named for the colors Red, Green, and Blue.Īs it turns out, there is not just one RGB color space. Most people are at least a bit familiar with the way images are formed on a computer monitor or television by combining red, green, and blue dots of varying brightness to form a wide range of colors.

Color spaces are three-dimensional because our eyes have three different kinds of color-sensitive cells (called “cone cells” or “cones”), and thus every color space in one way or another must encode three different color intensities.
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We’ll talk a bit about what a “color space” is, why you should care, and how to tell which color space or spaces work best with your combination of equipment.Ī “color space” is a way of specifying a color numerically, usually as a triplet of numbers representing positions in a three-dimensional “space” of color. This article is about how to choose the output color space from your player and/or video processor.
