Ranges: all nineteen

The detail behind Ranges. A Range asks one question of every colour — can this print condition reproduce it within 2.5 ΔE₀₀? — and these are the answers, for the nineteen conditions the browser offers.

Percentage of scored samples within 2.5 ΔE₀₀. 4072 of the 4253 carry a score; 181 were added after these figures were computed in April 2024 and are reported unscored rather than counted as passing.

How to read the spread

From 100% to 23%. The same 4253 colours, and the difference between the best and the worst condition is more than three quarters of the library. That range is the single most useful thing on this page: a colour is not printable or unprintable, it is printable here and not there.

Wide-gamut RGB is not a printing achievement. ProPhoto and the photo printers sit at the top because their gamuts are enormous, not because they are accurate. A colour inside ProPhoto has told you very little.

Coated to uncoated costs 29 points. 66% against 37%, same inks, same standard, different paper — which is the measured version of the argument on Substrate Independent.

Extended gamut buys eleven points over CMYK. 77% against 66% for a seven-colour process. Real, and less than people expect: the added primaries fill specific gaps rather than expanding everything.

The displays cluster around 92–95%. An iMac, a MacBook and a P3 display all land within three points of Adobe RGB. A colour that will be seen mainly on screens has more room than one that will be printed, which is the opposite of the assumption most people carry.

What a Range is, exactly

For each colour, the Lab values are converted into the print condition through its ICC profile and converted straight back, and the ΔE₀₀ between the original and the round trip is stored. A colour passes the Range if that figure is at or below 2.5.

Which means a Range is a statement about a profile, not about a press. Two shops running the same standard on the same paper will differ; the profile describes a reference condition, not their machine. For work that matters, profile your own device — the desktop application takes your ICC profile and computes the same answer against it.

Using more than one at a time

Select several Ranges and a colour has to pass all of them. That is the question a brand owner actually has: which colours work in every process this product will use? Pick Coated CMYK, unCoated CMYK and Newspaper together and what remains will survive almost anything — a much smaller palette, and one that will not generate arguments.