Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by chrismorgan 293 days ago
No. We’re talking about colours way beyond the ranges of human perception.

For this specific gradient, see https://oklch.com/#0.7017,0.3225,328.36,100 and https://oklch.com/#0.86644,0.294827,142.4953,100, and look at the Chroma panel, see how far out of our screen gamuts they are (even tick “Show Rec2020”, which adds a lot of chroma around blue–green and magenta–red), and try to imagine the colours between the lime and magenta (in either direction). The red direction is probably the easier to reason about: there’s just no such colour as a light, bright red. You can have bright or light, but not both. (Its 3D view can also be useful to visualise these things: you’re building a straight-line bridge between two peaks, and there’s a chasm in between.)
3 comments
shrx 293 days ago
I don't get it, why am I seeing the "out of gamut" colors if my sRGB monitor is unable to display them? Would the charts look different on a P3 monitor?

edit: Also, you mentioned the colors "beyond the ranges of human perception" but I don't think there is any such limitation here, the bottleneck is the hardware (computer monitors).

link
chrismorgan 293 days ago
It’s squashing the range of the colours down to simulate it.
link
the_af 293 days ago
I don't understand why HN sometimes responds aggressively to an honest, puzzled question. It's as if being wrong (or confused) was a sin here, sometimes.

I thought yours was an honest question that warrants an answer (which thankfully Chris answered).

link
shrx 292 days ago
It was an honest question, thank you.
link
the_af 293 days ago
Wow, I never thought about bright light red when thinking of undisplayable colors. It makes a lot of intuitive sense, thanks!
link
ta8645 293 days ago
But once an algorithm to drag the colours back in-gamut was applied, would the lost perceptual uniformity still be a problem practically speaking, with DCI-P3 monitors?
link
chrismorgan 293 days ago
Yes. I repeat: these colours are way outside gamut. Not just a little bit. P3 helps a little bit, Rec.2020 would help a fair bit more, but you’re still asking for a yellow that is about twice as vibrant as is possible.
link