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. (Referring to CIELAB as "Lab" without asterisks should be avoided to prevent confusion with Hunter Lab). It expresses color as three values: L* for perceptual lightness and a* and b* for the four unique colors of human vision: red, 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.

This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. (November 2010)

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.

The CIELAB space is three-dimensional and covers the entire gamut (range) of human color perception. It is based on the opponent color model of human vision, where red and green form an opponent pair and blue and yellow form an opponent pair. The lightness value, L*, also referred to as "Lstar," defines black at 0 and white at 100. The a* axis is relative to the green–red opponent colors, with negative values toward green and positive values toward red. The b* axis represents the blue–yellow opponents, with negative numbers toward blue and positive toward yellow.

The a* and b* axes are unbounded and depending on the reference white they can easily exceed ±150 to cover the human gamut. Nevertheless, software implementations often clamp these values for practical reasons. For instance, if integer math is being used it is common to clamp a* and b* in the range of −128 to 127.

CIELAB is calculated relative to a reference white, for which the CIE recommends the use of CIE Standard illuminant D65.[1] D65 is used in the vast majority industries and applications, with the notable exception being the printing industry which uses D50. The International Color Consortium largely supports the printing industry and uses D50 with either CIEXYZ or CIELAB in the Profile Connection Space, for v2 and v4 ICC profiles.[2]

While the intention behind CIELAB was to create a space that was more perceptually uniform than CIEXYZ using only a simple formula,[3] CIELAB is known to lack perceptual uniformity, particularly in the area of blue hues.[4]

The lightness value, L* in CIELAB is calculated using the cube root of the relative luminance with an offset near black. This results in an effective power curve with an exponent of approximately 0.43 which represents the human eye's response to light under daylight (photopic) conditions.