Charts · 06

The gamuts

The horseshoe is every colour a human can see, mapped by the CIE in 1931. Each triangle is what a display standard can reproduce, its corners the three primaries. sRGB, the web’s default, covers about a third of it. Your screen is probably Display P3; the page asks it. Rec. 2020 puts its corners on the spectral edge itself, and nothing you can buy reaches them.

This screen reports no gamut.
460 nm480 nm500 nm520 nm540 nm560 nm580 nm600 nm620 nmRec. 2020Display P3sRGBD650.00.20.40.60.80.00.20.40.60.8xy

Notes

Chromaticity coordinates of the spectral locus are from the CIE 1931 2° standard observer at 5 nm steps. Primaries and white points: IEC 61966-2-1 (sRGB), SMPTE RP 431-2 and Apple (Display P3), Adobe RGB (1998), ITU-R BT.2020. Areas are the triangle areas in xy space relative to sRGB, the usual rough measure; a CIELAB volume comparison would differ. The fill maps each xy to XYZ at unit luminance, converts to linear sRGB, normalises so the brightest channel is one, and clips: honest inside sRGB, nearest-displayable outside. The screen check uses the CSS color-gamut media query.