424 Part IV Appendixes and Glossary
What Is a Device’s Gamut?
The range of colors an individual color device is capable of reproducing is known as its
gamut. Because of the differences in gamuts between devices, such as a displays and
printers, these devices are incapable of exactly reproducing the same range of colors. In
fact, two displays of the same model made by the same manufacturer have distinct
gamuts. Types of ink and paper stock can also affect a printer’s gamut. Likewise, the
age of a display and how frequently it’s used can affect its gamut.
Displays and printers cannot reproduce the same colors consistently when their
gamuts don’t overlap. For example, displays are capable of showing brighter and more
saturated colors than the colors produced by a printer. The illustrations below show
representations of the range of color and brightness values each device is capable of
displaying. If you superimpose the printer’s gamut on the display’s gamut, some of the
display’s colors fall outside the range of the printer’s gamut. The printer is incapable of
reproducing the full range of colors in the image displayed onscreen because of the
printer’s smaller gamut. Color values that are contingent upon the ability of a device to
reproduce color are known as device dependent.
Display’s gamut
Printer’s gamut
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