Color spaces with RGB primaries

RGB-Cube

Some forms of color space use color primaries defined via the additive RGB color model. A particular color space that employs RGB primaries for part of its specification is defined by the three chromaticities of the red, green, and blue additive primaries, and can produce any chromaticity that is the 2D triangle defined by those primary colors (ie. excluding transfer function, white point, etc.). The primary colors are specified in terms of their CIE 1931 color space chromaticity coordinates (x,y), linking them to human-visible color.

RGB is an abbreviation for red–green–blue.

Intuition

An RGB color can be understood by thinking of it as all possible colors that can be made from three colored lights for red, green, and blue. Imagine, for example, shining three lights together onto a white wall in a dark room: one red light, one green light, and one blue light, each with dimmers. If only the red light is on, the wall will be red. If only the green light is on, the wall will look green. If the red and green lights are on together, the wall will look yellow. Dim the red light and the wall will become more of a yellow-green. Dim the green light instead, and the wall will become more orange. Bringing up the blue light a bit will cause the orange to become less saturated and more whitish. In all, each setting of the three dimmers will produce a different result, either in color or in brightness or both. The set of all possible results is the gamut defined by those particular color lamps. Swap the red lamp for one of a different brand that is slightly more orange, and there will be a slightly different gamut, since the set of all colors that can be produced with the three lights will be changed.

Applications

A computer LCD display can be thought of as a grid of millions of little red, green, and blue lamps, each with their own dimmers. The gamut of the display will depend on the three colors used for the red, green, and blue lights, their pattern of organisation, and their luminance when on.

Some color spaces defined for this purpose with RGB primaries are sRGB and Adobe RGB (which has a significantly larger gamut). Adobe has recently developed another color space called Adobe Wide Gamut RGB, which is even larger, in detriment to gamut density.

As of 2007, sRGB is by far the most commonly used color space for computer displays. HDTVs use a similar space, commonly called Rec. 709, sharing the sRGB primaries. The sRGB space is considered adequate for most consumer applications. Having all devices use the same color space is convenient in that an image does not need to be converted from one color space to another before being displayed. However, sRGB's limited gamut leaves out many highly saturated colors that can be produced by printers or in film, and thus is not ideal for some high quality applications.

Specifications with RGB Primaries

Some color spaces with RGB primaries

Color space	Standard	Year	Gamut	White point	Primaries						Transfer function parameters
					Red		Green		Blue		α	β	γ	δ	βδ
					xʀ	yʀ	xɢ	yɢ	xʙ	yʙ	a + 1	K₀/φ		φ	K₀
ISO RGB			Limited	floating	floating
Extended ISO RGB			Unlimited (signed)
scRGB	IEC 61966-2-2	2003		D65	0.64	0.33	0.30	0.60	0.15	0.06
sRGB	IEC 61966-2-1	1990, 1996	CRT								1.055	0.0031308	12/5	12.92	0.04045
HDTV	ITU-R BT.709	1999									1.099	0.004	20/9	4.5	0.018
Adobe RGB 98		1998									1	0	563/256	1	0
PAL / SECAM	EBU 3213-E, ITU-R BT.470/601 (B/G)	1970					0.29				1	0	14/5	1	0
Apple RGB					0.625	0.34	0.28	0.595	0.155	0.07
NTSC	SMPTE RP 145 (C), 170M, 240M	1987			0.63		0.31				1.1115	0.0057	20/9	4	0.0228
NTSC-J		1987		D93
NTSC (FCC)	ITU-R BT.470/601 (M)	1953		C	0.67	0.33	0.21	0.71	0.14	0.08	1	0	11/5	1	0
eciRGB	ISO 22028-4	1999 (v1), 2007, 2012	Wide	D50							1.16	0.008856	3	9.033	0.08
DCI-P3	SMPTE RP 431-2	2011		Theater	0.68	0.32	0.265	0.69	0.15	0.06	1.055	0.0031308	12/5	12.92	0.04045
Display P3	SMPTE EG 432-1	2010		D65
UHDTV	ITU-R BT.2020, BT.2100	2012, 2016			0.708	0.292	0.170	0.797	0.131	0.046	1.0993	0.018054		4.5	0.081243
Adobe Wide Gamut RGB				D50	0.735	0.265	0.115	0.826	0.157	0.018
RIMM	ISO 22028-3	2006, 2012			0.7347	0.2653	0.1596	0.8404	0.0366	0.0001	1.099	0.0018	20/9	5.5	0.099
ROMM RGB, ProPhoto RGB	ISO 22028-2	2006, 2013									1	0.001953	9/5	16	0.031248
CIE RGB		1931		E			0.2738	0.7174	0.1666	0.0089
CIE XYZ		1931	Unlimited		1	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	1	1	0

See also

• CIE L*a*b* color space
• Web colors
• RGB color model
• RGBA color model

External links

• Pascale, Danny. "A Review of RGB color spaces...from xyY to R'G'B'" (PDF). http://www.babelcolor.com/download/A%20review%20of%20RGB%20color%20spaces.pdf. Retrieved 2008-01-21. 
• Susstrunk, Buckley and Swen. "Standard RGB Color Spaces" (PDF). http://infoscience.epfl.ch/getfile.py?mode=best&recid=34089. Retrieved November 18, 2005. 
• Lindbloom, Bruce. "RGB Working Space Information". http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html?WorkingSpaceInfo.html. Retrieved November 18, 2005. 
• Colantoni, Philippe. "RGB cube transformation in different color spaces". Archived from the original on 2008-05-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20080505081130/http://www.couleur.org/index.php?page=rgbcube.