1 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
In a chromaticity diagram, what are the colours like inside the parabola but outside the central triangle that represents display screens? I’m assuming it’s not possible to illustrate with a photo on the web because I’m viewing the web with a display screen.
Comment by chilidoggo at 24/07/2024 at 18:44 UTC
4 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I assume you're talking about the chart with the parabola and triangle shown here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space
You maybe know that light has a wavelength/frequency that determines its color. Red has a long wavelength, blue has a short one. This is 100% true - a specific wavelength will always correspond to exactly one color. That's what the full parabola is for: the border of it maps out each wavelength to a certain color.
The thing that's getting you here is that human eyes cannot do the reverse - *we cannot calculate wavelength if we only know the color*. We can give an approximation, but we can't say for sure because our eyes do a terrible job with the hues of blue-green.
So if you look at that chart and focus on the triangle portion, you'll notice that every color inside the triangle is unique. If you look outside the triangle, you'll actually find that every color out there is not unique, and in fact has an equivalent inside the triangle. The parabola is every combination of wavelengths and what color we see. The triangle is showing the range of our RGB vision.
If you want to know more, the Wikipedia page honestly does a pretty good job of explaining it. Please feel free to read further and come back with questions.
Comment by [deleted] at 25/07/2024 at 06:06 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
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