There are a lot of ways to specify colors. In general, we want to specify colors from a color space using a color model.
Color space decides the range of color to draw from while color model decides how the color is represented.
For example, the RGB color model can used to represent colors in different color spaces such as sRGB.
Color spaces can be visualized by chromaticity diagram. It is usually draw from the tristimulus theory of color.
There are a lot of color models besides RGB, such as
- HSV
- hue, saturation, value
- more intuitive than RGB/CMYK
- SML
- physiological model
- corresponds to stimulus of cones
- not practical for most color work
- XYZ
- perceptually-driven model
- Y captures luminance (intensity)
- X, Z capture chromaticity (color)
- related to, but different from, SML
- Lab - “perceptually uniform” modification of XYZ