Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can't Show You
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Screens cannot display many naturally occurring cyans due to color gamut limits, but they can be found in forests and underwater.
The human eye perceives color via three cone cells that respond to light intensity, not wavelength. Screens use three primaries to stimulate these cones, but the sRGB gamut excludes a significant lobe of cyans and greens. Natural processes like light filtering through leaves or water repeatedly purify spectra, producing colors outside this gamut. Examples include light transmitted through deciduous forest leaves or filtered by water over sand, creating vivid cyans and greens. Birds use structural color, such as feather barbules with melanin layers, to produce iridescent colors unreproducible on screens.
What commenters are saying
Commenters praised the article's clarity and use of color space diagrams. Many shared personal experiences with vivid colors, such as blue lasers or ultramarine paint, that screens cannot replicate. Several noted that paint and ink can produce such colors but photos lose them. One commenter asked why the CIE diagram is 2D; others explained it is a slice of constant brightness. Another highlighted that modern color modeling is more complex, with CIE 1931 obsolete. A top commenter corrected that orange-red-purple colors are a greater practical defect of sRGB than the missing cyans.