Color Matching and Observer Metamerism Across Displays With Narrow‐Band Primaries and Color Gamuts Approaching Rec. 2020

Color matching functions (CMFs) serve as the fundamental basis for deriving tristimulus values and chromaticities, which are essential for color specification, calibration, and reproduction. With the rapid advancement of display technologies, modern commercial devices increasingly adopt displays with narrower primary spectra and larger color gamut areas approaching Rec. 2020. In this study, ten observers performed color matching using five displays selected to cover color gamuts from sRGB to those approaching Rec. 2020, with the stimuli having a field of view of 20.2°. The results showed that displays with wider color gamuts and narrower‐band primaries generally introduced greater observer metamerism and reduced the accuracy of the standard CIE CMFs in characterizing the average color matches. None of the four CIE CMFs provided accurate characterization across all displays. The CIE 2006 10° CMFs performed best for the neutral stimulus, while the CIE 1931 2° CMFs performed better for the blue and violet stimuli. For the laser projector with the narrowest primaries, all the four CIE CMFs failed to characterize color matches with average chromaticity differences greater than 0.008 Δu ′ v ′, and the observer metamerism was substantially greater than the other displays.