Gamuts are all available colors within a specific [[Color space]]. Said another way, they are the range of human-perceivable color that can be displayed within a certain color space.
Each of the triangles overlaid on the CIE 1931 XYZ chart signifies a gamut:
![[Gamut_NateBaldwin.png]]
Viewed from the lens of *gamuts*, displays come in three types:
* Standard (srgb)
* Wide Gamut (p3)
* Ultrawide Gamuts (rec2020)
(Fun fact: there's a media query where I can check for the color gamut of a user's display, and do some wide-gamut stuff; `@media (color-gamut: p3)`. See Chris Lilley's July 2023, note 3 for some caveats here.)
If a color is outside the triangle describing the gamut of a particular monitor, that color cannot be displayed—it's "out of gamut." For interesting reasons, though, we can't automatically say that "if a color is inside of a given triangle, it is in gamut."
Right now, sRGB is the standard. But wide-gamut displays are gaining browser support. They're also used in retina displays (including my own).
## Flashcards
| Q | A |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| What is a gamut? | All available colors within a specific color space |
| A color gamut can be used to describe either | * Color reproduced by an output device (printer or display)<br>* Colors capable of being captured by an input device (camera) |
| What does [[Gamut_NateBaldwin.png\|this picture]] represent? | Different color gamuts overlaid on the visible spectrum |
| From the perspective of _gamuts_, what are the different kinds of displays? | 1. Standard (i.e. sRGB)<br>2. Wide Gamut (i.e. P3) |
## Reference
[Baldwin, Nate. "Gamut" (Color & Contrast, accessed June 2024).](https://colorandcontrast.com/#/gamut)
[Lilley, Chris. "What are color gamuts" (July 2023, personal blog).](https://svgees.us/blog/whatGamuts.html) Here, Chris reviews what a gamut is in light of CSS Color 4 adding wide color gamut colors.
[Wong, Jamie. "Color: From Hexcodes to Eyeballs > CIE XYZ Color Space" (April 2018, personal site).](https://jamie-wong.com/post/color/#cie-xyz-color-space) He notes how gamuts are mapped on to the xy chromaticity diagram.
> The triangle on the right without the checkerboard is all of the chromaticities that _can_ be reproduced by a positive combination. We call the area that can be reproduced the **gamut** of the color space.