CIELAB color space

The CIELAB color space, also referred to as L*a*b*, is a color space defined by the International Commission on Illumination (abbreviated CIE) in 1976.[lower-alpha 1] It expresses color as three values: L* for perceptual lightness and a* and b* for the four unique colors of human vision: magenta, green, blue and yellow. CIELAB was intended as a perceptually uniform space, where a given numerical change corresponds to a similar perceived change in color. While the LAB space is not truly perceptually uniform, it nevertheless is useful in industry for detecting small differences in color.

CIELAB color space top view
CIELAB color space front view
The CIE 1976 (L*, a*, b*) color space (CIELAB), showing only colors that fit within the sRGB gamut (and can therefore be displayed on a typical computer display). Each axis of each square ranges from −128 to 127.

Like the CIEXYZ space it derives from, CIELAB color space is a device-independent, "standard observer" model. The colors it defines are not relative to any particular device such as a computer monitor or a printer, but instead relate to the CIE standard observer which is an averaging of the results of color matching experiments under laboratory conditions.

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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article CIELAB color space, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.