Professor Newman on... In the lab

On how the CIELAB colour space attempts to describe human colour perception

- Bob Newman

In my previous article I talked about the creation of the CIE XYZ colour space, and its position as one of the reference points for all other colour spaces. This article is all about the other one, the CIE Lab colour space, which was released in 1976, 35 years after XYZ. As we learned, XYZ was based on the assumption that human colour perception could be described using the mathematics of linear geometry. At that time little was known about the physiology of the human visual cortex, or indeed the working of neurons, the building blocks of the brain. In that regard it's astounding that XYZ works as well as it does. But by 1976 much more research had been done, and the CIELAB space took advantage of its results to provide a more accurate model of colour perception.