The Gamut Window shows the 3-dimensional relationships between the monitor, printer and production gamuts and the currently selected colours.
This feature requires QuickDraw 3D to be installed. If QuickDraw 3D is not available, the gamut window will be disabled. Some features of the gamut window, such as transparent gamuts, are only available with certain video cards (You need 3D acceleration and sufficient RAM for it to work. If the window is enlarged too far, transparency may stop working until the window size is reduced).
Viewing the Gamut Window
In ColourSys, go to Window Menu > Gamut Window. The following window will open:
The view in the Gamut Window can be rotated by clicking on the window and dragging. If you let go of the mouse button while the view is still moving, the view will continue to spin.
Looking at the display in the Gamut Window, you can see the relative strengths and weaknesses of the current monitor and printer gamuts. Notice that the printer gamut is usually curved, whereas the monitor gamut is linear (with some distortion due to the view being in Lab space). This reflects the physical processes by which the two devices produce colour.
The Options button lets you to control the elements shown in the gamut view.
Setting the Gamut View options
Monitor and printer gamuts
The gamuts can be shown as either solid or transparent (if transparent is selected, you can see objects inside the gamut). Each gamut can either be viewed in a specific colour, or the actual colours reproduced by the device at that point (subject to monitor limitations and the effects of 3D shading on the model).
Colour chips
Colour chips are shown as solid spheres, with a default of 5 delta-E units radius. The radius can be altered by typing in the field. It can be useful to reduce the radius of the spheres to see if there are any gaps in your colour file.
Note: If you make the radius too large, the redraw speed of the gamut window will be slow. All the selected chips in the active colour file and the colour in the Chip Window will be shown in the Gamut Window.
Production gamuts
Selecting Production Gamut shows a representation of the gamut of a selected production process. It can be shown instead of the Monitor and Printer gamuts, or at the same time.
Click Open to select a specific gamut file. This will only work if a gamut file has been generated for you by AVA.
Note: In order to create a production gamut, the AVA Production Colour module is required. Please speak with your AVA Commercial Manager for further details.
Out of gamut colours
The Gamut Window can also demonstrate what happens when colours are out of gamut. For example, a blue colour which is outside the printers gamut will be seen outside the visible gamut area of the printer. The Printer Gamut can be shown as a solid shape to make the edges more obvious.
You can tell when a colour is out of gamut because it is outside the gamut solid! The printer cannot print this colour so when it is printed, ColourSys will pick a printer colour which is as close as possible on the printer.