Tutorial on Color Models, Color Spaces, Color Profiles and Gamma-Correction

Hi Everyone,

In the need to understand the sometimes complex subject of Color Models, Color Spaces and Color Profiles (and gamma-correction) better, I found it hard to find a nice to read and complete source on the matter. So after I did a deep dive into the subject I decided to share what I’ve learned about it by writing a tutorial blog about it with illustrations and interactives. By now I published two articles as a twopart about color management. The articles are available in both Dutch as English:

part 1: Color Models and color basics, to pave the way to Color Spaces for the next and last part of the article.
English: What are Color Models?
Dutch: Wat zijn Color Models?
colspblog-color-models

part 2: Color Spaces, Color Profiles and Gamma-Correction. Pretty technical, but with some more interactives to make it a little more hands on.
English: What are Color Spaces, Color Profiles and Gamma Correction?
Dutch: Wat zijn Color Spaces, Color Profiles en Gamma-Correctie?
colspblog-colorspace

I think this could benefit other designers (and photographers) here too in understanding Color Spaces and Color Profiles better, making them less mysterious. When to choose which in your designs, and making Color Spaces a little less confusing to understand.

Hope you like it and if this makes others understand the subject better and as enthousiastic as I am now about it after this, I reached my goal!

Spread the word to make everybody understand Color Spaces a little better and make even more quality stuff!

Maarten

2 Likes

Nice!

This is very nice (and useful). I especially like the interactive canvas elements.

But you likely want to change the following since you have it backwards.

Heading from the red end of the visible spectrum to the blue end, the wavelengths get shorter and, consequently, their frequencies increase. Reds have a frequency in the 400 THz range. Blues are up in the 600s.

You’re absolutely right. Great find. I obviously wrote ‘frequencies’ instead of ‘wavelengths’, so was accidentely mixing the two and didn’t notice it during the check. Thanks for letting me know! I appreciated it. It’s corrected now!

Thanks @Steve_O and @Just-B ! Nice to read you guys like it! :slight_smile: It would be great if a lot of people would benefit and understand Color Spaces a little better. I think the subject gets too little attention and remains a mystery and intimidating to a lot of people (including me in the past), although it’s very important and crucial for professional quality work.