GeräteGamuts

GeräteGamuts, commonly referred to as device gamuts, describe the range of colors that a specific device can reproduce under defined viewing conditions. A device's gamut is determined by its color primaries, white point, and the spectral properties of its light sources or pigments. In practice, displays use RGB primaries; printers and other color devices use CMYK or other colorant sets. The gamut is the region occupied by those colors in a device-independent color space such as CIE XYZ or CIELAB, often visualized as a 3D volume or a 2D chromaticity diagram with a white point representing neutral colors.

Gamut boundaries are fixed by hardware and calibration; aging, lamp or display aging, and ambient conditions can shrink or shift the gamut. Colors outside the device’s gamut cannot be reproduced exactly and must be approximated or clipped, to varying perceptual effect. When colors are transferred between devices with different gamuts, color management is used to map colors from one gamut to another, a process called gamut mapping. ICC profiles supply the descriptive data needed for such mappings and the rendering intents define how out-of-gamut colors are treated.

Common examples include sRGB and Adobe RGB on displays, with DCI-P3 used in some cinema and HDR workflows; in printing, CMYK gamuts vary by press and ink. Understanding device gamuts supports accurate color reproduction across cameras, screens, and printers.