Surprise #1: Not Every Color Can Be Captured

Many people are surprised to find out that both cameras and monitors cannot represent all the colors that might occur in a painting. They do a great job, but the technology has limits. By analogy, the camera can only use the crayon box available to it in order to color the photograph. Obviously, an 8 count crayon box will yield a less accurate image than a 64 or 128 count crayon box. The defined set of colors made available to the camera or monitor are known as “color spaces.” The image on the right depicts all of the colors the human eye can see, while the triangles inside show the color spaces available to most cameras and monitors. For a variety of reasons, the “sRGB” space, however limited it may be, is what nearly all devices in the world use to represent colors. If the actual color does not land in that “crayon box”, the next closest color within it is used.