What Is CIE?

You will see the letters CIE a lot if you look at the color profiles. CIE is an acronym for the International Commission on Illumination. They are the authority on light. CIE conducted some experiments in the 1920s to determine the range of light that people could see.

For us to see color, we have three separate sensors in our eyes called cones. They have the names long, medium, and small—referred to as LMS. Your L cone accepts red light. M receives green light. S receives blue light. Some of the profiles and color models use the CIE standard to ground itself in the color format. This doesn’t have to do much with creating art, so I will leave it to you if you want to do further research.