User's Guide

59 | NEC SPECTRAVIEW II - USER’S GUIDE
Appendix
B
Glossary
Achromatic – Neutral in color (having no hue).
Additive Primaries – Red, green, and blue light that when combined in different relative intensi-
ties produces different colors. (See also Subtractive Primaries)
Backlight – the internal light source for a Liquid Crystal Display, such as uorescent lamps or ar-
ray of LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes).
Black body – A hypothetical object that absorbs all incident radiation, thus any radiation (e.g. light)
coming from a blackbody must be emitted from it and not reected.
Blackbody Radiator Locus – The curved formed when the color of light radiated from a black-
body is plotted at different temperatures on a color space such as CIE xy.
Black Level – The luminance or “brightness” of black when displayed on the screen.
Calibration – The process of bringing a device such as a display monitor to an absolute standard
to ensure consistency over time and with other similarly calibrated devices.
Candelas (cd) – An international unit of light intensity. Luminance can be described in units of
Candelas per meter squared (cd/m²) but is often referred to as just Candelas or Nits for sake of
brevity.
CIE – The Commission Internationale d’Eclairage (International Commission on Illumination). An
organization that sets many of the standards used in color and color measurement.
CIE Lab – A color space that is relative to a reference white point. The L value represents light-
ness, a represents Red/Green and b represents Yellow/Blue. Lab is almost perceptually uniform in
that differences between colors expressed in Lab correlate to equally perceived color differences.
CIE uv chromaticity coordinates – Coordinates in the CIE uv color space which are derived
directly from CIE xyY color space. CIE uv is more perceptually uniform than CIE xy.
CIE xy chromaticity coordinates – Coordinates in the CIE xyY color space representing color
independent of luminance.
CIE xyY – A standard color space in which the Y component represents luminance. The x and y
components represent color.
Color Gamut – (See Gamut)
Colorimeter – An optical measurement device used to measure color that responds to light by
separating it into red, green, and blue components.
Color Management System (CMS) – Software used to control the handling of color between
scanner, monitor, and printer. ColorSync is an example of a CMS used on the Macintosh. Micro-
soft Image Color Management (ICM) is an example of a CMS used on Windows systems.