POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Spectral locus : Re: Spectral locus Server Time
1 Jul 2024 01:42:48 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Spectral locus  
From: clipka
Date: 17 Mar 2017 13:07:56
Message: <58cc17ec@news.povray.org>
Am 17.03.2017 um 17:16 schrieb Mike Horvath:
> Is it appropriate to use the word "gamut" to describe the visible
> spectrum? Or should it be restricted to things like sRGB or CMYK?

Typically the term "gamut" is used to denote the subset of colours that
can be reproduced by a given /device/ or /process/ (or, by extension, a
certain standard for such devices or processes).

You could argue that the shape you're currently trying to depict is the
gamut of all theoretically possible pigments or colour filters under a
given illuminant; I guess you might also call this the gamut of the
given illuminant itself.


As for whether the word "gamut" would be appropriate to describe "the
visible spectrum", I have a hunch that you may not actually mean "the
visible spectrum" but a related yet different concept.

"The visible spectrum" is not a set of colours, but rather a range of
wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation.

Even "a spectrum" (in the sense of power as a /function/ of wavelength)
is not a colour (in the sense used in conjunction with the term "gamut",
i.e. a particular visual stimulus), but rather /corresponds to/ a
colour, with multiple spectra corresponding to the same colour (metamerism).


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