In colorimetry, the CIE 1976 ("L*", "u*", "v*") color space, also known as the CIELUV color space, is a color space adopted by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) in 1976, as a simple-to-compute transformation of the 1931 CIE XYZ color space, but which attempted perceptual uniformity. It is extensively used for applications such as computer graphics which deal with colored lights. Although additive mixtures of different colored lights will fall on a line in CIELUV's uniform chromaticity diagram (dubbed the "CIE 1976 UCS"), such additive mixtures will not, contrary to popular belief, fall along a line in the CIELUV color space unless the mixtures are constant in lightness.
Historical background
CIELUV is an Adams chromatic valence color space, and is an update of the CIE 1964 color space (CIEUVW). The differences include a slightly modified lightness scale, and a modified uniform chromaticity scale (in which one of the coordinates, v', is 1.5 times as large as "v", its 1960 predecessor. CIELUV and CIELAB were adopted simultaneously by the CIE when no clear consensus could be formed behind only one or the other of these two color spaces.
CIELUV uses Judd-type (translational) white point adaptation (in contrast with CIELAB, which uses a "wrong" von Kries transform). [cite journal|first=Deane B.|last=Judd|title=Hue saturation and lightness of surface colors with chromatic illumination|journal=JOSA|volume=30|issue=1|month=January|year=1940|pages=2–32| url=http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=josa-30-1-2] This can produce useful results when working with a single illuminant, but can predict imaginary colors (i.e., outside the spectral locus) when attempting to use it as a chromatic adaptation transform.[Mark D Fairchild, "Color Appearance Models." Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998.] The translational adaptation transform used in CIELUV has also been shown to perform poorly in predicting corresponding colors.][D. H. Alman, R. S. Berns, G. D. Snyder, and W. A. Larson, "Performance testing of color difference metrics using a color-tolerance dataset." "Color Research and Application," 21:174-188 (1989).] ] XYZ → CIELUV, CIELUV → XYZ conversions
For typical images, u* and v* range ±100. By definition,