2 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
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.
This is only true when viewing the diagram on an RGB display? The point is that the RGB color space cannot represent every color that can be seen by human eyes. This is because the different color-cones in the eyes have overlapping activation ranges, so eg. pure red light will also significantly trigger the green cones. This results in some activation combinations which are possible with other wavelength-combinations but impossible with only RGB. *(It also means some activation combinations are just straight up impossible - see impossible colors[1])*
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color
The range of colors that can be accurately represented by a color-space is called its gamut[2]. There are in fact other color spaces with a wider gamut - see this diagram[3] for example.
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_spaces#/media/File:CIE1931xy_gamut_comparison.svg
To answer OP's question of "what does this look like" - if you take a picture with your phone of a bright pink neon sign, or one of those painfully bright yellow safety vests, or a brilliant orange sunset, and then hold the screen next to the thing, you'll notice the picture always looks less brilliant than the real thing. The colors look muted because they cannot be accurately represented using RGB, so the nearest possible color is chosen instead.
Comment by rentar42 at 25/07/2024 at 12:12 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This is only true when viewing the diagram on an RGB display?
If I read this other response[1] correctly then no: this is always true when looking at it *with human eyes*, because it's not *just* "interpretation" in the brain, that's limiting the possible colors, but the actual physical properties of the sensors (i.e. eyes) we use to perceive those colors.
Even if you built a hyper-precise display that can actually fully accurately reproduce every possible combination of wavelengths (i.e. produce "all possible colors", your perception would still only see unique values inside the triangle and "repeat colors" outside.
