Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] CSS Color: lab(), lch() (#488)

In case it helps TAG review, CIE Lab (the rectangular form) and LCH (the polar form) were standardized in 1976 by the International Lighting Commission (CIE). It then became an International Standard and was jointly published with ISO. The latest edition of that reference is

   **ISO/CIE 11664-4:2019(E)**: Colorimetry — Part 4: CIE 1976 L*a*b* colour space. 2019. 
   Published. URL: http://cie.co.at/publications/colorimetry-part-4-cie-1976-lab-colour-space-1 

Lab is widely used in the paint, printing, and film industries. It is used as an interchange space, and commercial instruments exist to measure it. For example, making a color profile for a particular printer, ink and paper combination consists of printing a large number of swatches with combinations of the inks used, then measuring the Lab values with a spectrophotometer. These measurements are then used to construct an inverted 4D (for CMYK) lookup table to calculate in the reverse direction - given a Lab color, what combination of inks wil give the closest measured result?

So Lab and LCH are well proven in both standardization and in industry practice. The question for the TAG is how best to integrate these with the Web platform.

In terms of implementer interest, Apple is currently implementing in WebKit for Safari, using their existing ColorSync architecture (an implementation of ICC profiles). BFO is implementing for their CSS/HTML to PDF product, and I see that @felipeerias is now evaluating whether and how to do this for Chromium. I'm not aware of any public signals from Mozilla.

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