The Unsung Heroes of Imaging

The gamut of different colour spaces, plotted in a CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram.

Image is BenRG and cmglee, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Abstract

Hidden, like a hero whose tale is lost to time, there is a common thread weaving through analog television, video, and modern digital imaging. That thread is called luma-chroma colour spaces, and powers how humans are able to see, process, and transmit colours across a variety of media and purposes.

This talk is intended to lift the veil about these color spaces; we will cover their origins, what they are intended for, and showcase samples covering the past 60 years of imaging technologies. Examples include (but are not limited) to: NTSC, PAL, the Okta color spaces, YCbCr, XYB…

Media coverage

This talk was given at FireShonks, an event part of the 37th Chaos Communication Congress.

This is the official C3VOC recording of the talk. The slides and the official synopsis are available here. Source code for the slides is available on GitHub.

References

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