Should I use a colour specification system for image data?
A digitized colour image is represented as an array of pixels, where each pixel contains numerical components that define a colour. Three components are necessary and sufficient for this purpose, although in printing it is convenient to use a fourth (black) component. In theory, the three numerical values for image coding could be provided by a colour specification system. But a practical image coding system needs to be computationally efficient, cannot afford unlimited precision, need not be intimately related to the CIE system and generally needs to cover only a reasonably wide range of colours and not all of the colours. So image coding uses different systems than colour specification. The systems useful for image coding are linear RGB, nonlinear R’G’B’, nonlinear CMY, nonlinear CMYK, and derivatives of nonlinear R’G’B’ such as Y’CBCR. Numerical values of hue and saturation are not useful in colour image coding. If you manufacture cars, you have to match the colour of paint on the d
