Main Color Models
CIELAB
RGB
CIELAB is the second of two systems adopted by CIE in 1976 as models that better
Munsell showed uniform color spacing in their values. CIELAB is an opponent color system based
on the earlier (1942) system of Richard Hunter called L, a, b. Color opposition correlates
HSB/HLS
with discoveries in the mid1960s that somewhere between the optical nerve and the
brain, retinal color stimuli are translated into distinctions between light and dark, red
CIE
and green, and blue and yellow. CIELAB indicates these values with three axes: L*, a*,
CIEXYZ and b*. (The full nomenclature is 1976 CIE L*a*b* Space.)
The central vertical axis represents lightness (signified as L*) whose values run from 0
CIELUV
(black) to 100 (white). This scale is closely related to Munsell's value axis except that the
CIELAB value of each step is much greater. This is the same lightness valuation used in CIELUV.
The color axes are based on the fact that a color can't be both red and green, or both
blue and yellow, because these colors oppose each other. On each axis the values run
from positive to negative. On the aa' axis, positive values indicate amounts of red while
negative values indicate amounts of green. On the bb' axis, yellow is positive and blue is
negative. For both axes, zero is neutral gray:
Therefore, values are only needed for two color axes and for the lightness or grayscale
axis (L*), which is separate (unlike in RGB, CMY or XYZ where lightness depends on
relative amounts of the three color channels).
CIELAB has become very important for desktop color. Like all CIE models, it is device
independent (unlike RGB and CMYK), is the basic color model in Adobe PostScript (level
2 and level 3), and is used for color management as the device independent model of
the ICC (International Color Consortium) device profiles.
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