AdobeRGB vs. sRGB

AdobeRGB vs. sRGB

If you’ve dug through your camera’s settings a few times, you’ve likely ran into the Color Space setting. You may have asked another photographer what it all means, and they’ve probably just told you to set it to one or the other, and forget about it. However, both sRGB and AdobeRGB have their advantages and disadvantages, so how do you distinguish one from the other?

What is Color Space?
In layman’s terms, color space is just a specific range of colors that can be represented in a given photo. JPEG images can contain up to 16.7 million colors, though neither color space actually uses all 16.7 million colors available. Different color spaces allows for you to use a broader or narrower range of those 16.7 million colors used in a JPEG image. The difference lies within what is considered wider and narrower color spaces.

ColorRangessRGBAdobeRGB AdobeRGB vs. sRGB

The image above explains it pretty well. Both images contain only three colors, however, the colors shown in the AdobeRGB scale have more differential between them. This means photos taken in the AdobeRGB color space will have more vibrancy in their colors, whereas sRGB will traditionally have more subtle tones. In situations where you’re photographing strong color tones, sRGB may need to dull them out to accommodate, whereas AdobeRGB is able to display those colors with more accuracy.

The Types

In digital photography, there are two main types of color spaces, AdobeRGB and sRGB. If you go into your camera’s settings, you’ll see that you’ll have the option of using either, straight out of the camera. You’ll also have the option of converting it to one or the other in post processing (with limitations), but which one should you use?

The Difference
To better understand which one to use, you must first understand the difference between the two. AdobeRGB, by all accounts is better, as it represents a wider range of colors. How much better? They say that AdobeRGB is able to represent about 35% more color ranges than sRGB is able to. But does that make it the best for photography? Not exactly, as the world works with sRGB far more than it does with AdobeRGB.

sRGB came first, and almost everything on a computer is built around sRGB. The internet, video games, applications, personal devices, and most everything else has adapted sRGB as their standard for color space. Even the monitor you’re using likely cannot display all the colors of AdobeRGB. That’s right, most traditional computer monitors can only display about 97% of the sRGB color space, and only about 76% of the AdobeRGB color space. Even screen calibrators will often tell you how much of the color gamut you’re able to display.

Since most web browsers have adapted sRGB as its color space, if you upload an image to the internet with the AdobeRGB gamut, the browser will convert it to sRGB, and it’ll do a terrible job at it, as shown below.

The photo above is an unedited photo that I took this summer. If you shoot in AdobeRGB, and let web convert your photos, you’ll be left with dull, muted tones. So why not shoot in sRGB full time? You absolutely can. However, if you’re printing your work, you’re losing potential colors in your images by shooting sRGB.

Printers, have began adapting the AdobeRGB color space. This allows for more vibrant colors in your prints, with better color consistency that your own monitor cannot even replicate. But do you want your prints to look differently than they do on your monitor? I say yes, as it provides richer colors that bring out details that would otherwise go unseen.

When shooting in AdobeRGB, you’re able to convert it to sRGB at any time, without any loss of color in your images. However, this is a one way street, as sRGB is unable to accurately convert back to AdobeRGB.

If you’re not printing your work often, sRGB is the choice of color space for you. It’ll be the surefire way to guarantee that your photos look great on the web, and still look accurate in print. However, if you’re often printing your work, and looking for vibrant colors, AdobeRGB may be the choice for you, it just adds a few steps to your workflow process, as you’ll need to save them as sRGB to correctly display them on the web.

How to Accurately Convert Your Photos from AdobeRGB to sRGB

In Adobe Lightroom

If you use a tandem of Lightroom and Photoshop, Adobe makes this conversion process painless for you. My workflow, and many others consists of loading images into Lightroom, making basic corrections, then importing the image directly into Photoshop. Upon importing to Photoshop, you can have your images converted for web with just a few simple setting adjustments. Simply go into Edit>>Preferences>>External Editing and adjust your color space to sRGB when being imported to Photoshop. This technique is the most preferred, as it’ll automatically convert all images you export to Photoshop to sRGB, without any color loss in the web format. This will also allow you to keep both an AdobeRGB copy of the image for print, and an sRGB version to use for web and everything else.

In Adobe Photoshop

If you work without Lightroom and still want the benefits of AdobeRGB color space, you can also convert your images for web in Photoshop. Simply navigate through your menus to Edit>>Convert To Profile and change your destination space to sRGB after editing your image. To insure that you do this everytime, I recommend you incorporate it an action used for saving your images. Remember, failure to convert your images prior to saving them for web will result in dull and unflattering color tones.

Conclusion

If this at all confuses you and leaves you feeling overwhelmed, switch your camera to sRGB color space, and leave it like that. It’ll still allow you to photograph and print beautiful images. However, if you’re shooting specifically for print, AdobeRGB offers more range and versatility in the images taken. It all really comes down to personal preference, AdobeRGB does offer more colors, but at the cost of complicating things for a subtle difference in your photos. However, if you’re a perfectionist, like myself, the extra steps taken to shoot in AdobeRGB may be worth the headache to achieve nicer prints, and get the best of both worlds.

FS Originals

Pictures

Printing

« VSCO Film 03 Emulates Instant Film

Fashion BTS with David Thompson »

http://twitter.com/Jensthetraveler Jens Marklund
Note that this is regarding Jpegs. If you shoot raw, your photo will be in Adobe RGB not matter what color space you chose.
Adobe RGB gives more room in post. But since the web only allows for sRGB, and from what I know – most printers will only print within the sRGB range (unless they’re terribly expensive) – you will most likely still covert to sRGB when outputting the image.
http://profile.yahoo.com/3XDHK3U6TBCZOGF3DUJJ736QLQ Alain
You’ve just ended a five year quest for me. I will never thank you enough.
http://www.paintedwithlights.blogspot.com/ Damon
Thanks for that article. It was very helpful. I’ve noticed that when I “save for web” out of Photoshop I get some pretty drastic differences between what I see in LR and what I see in the save file. Is this due to conversion of colour space? The pic on the right is what I see in LR and the one on the left is after the export to PS and a “save for web” in sRGB.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23687796@N05/8481787843/in/photostream
http://twitter.com/PeterKremzar Peter Kremzar
I’m sorry but this post is completely misleading. It would take a few additional posts to explain some of the basics of the color management just to see what is wrong here.
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
Actually, when shooting in RAW, you’ll be shooting in ProPhoto RGB, which is a larger scale color space than both sRGB and AdobeRGB. I was going to touch base on that, but I didn’t want to complicate anything any further.
And from my understanding on printers, a lot of them are adapting the AdobeRGB color space, because of the richer tones gained from it. And yes, your average printer might not have this support, but more printers used in print labs will.
http://www.facebook.com/stephan.mantler Stephan Mantler
My thoughts exactly. The first paragraph alone is so wrong I checked my calendar to make absolutely positively sure it’s not April 1st.
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
Whats inaccurate with it? The failure to mention ProPhotoRGB? That was done intentionally, as not to confuse people further with another system all together.
http://www.facebook.com/stephan.mantler Stephan Mantler
“JPEG images can contain up to 16.7 million colors, though neither color space actually uses all 16.1 million colors available.”
16.7 or 16.1?
In any case, all (8-bit) color spaces use 256^3 different values. The REAL difference is which (physical/perceptual, depending on the color space) colors these values actually represent.
If you need a simpler explanation, try this:
—
The different color spaces are like using a 10-inch ruler vs. a 10-cm ruler. Each has 10 divisions for each unit, and while the inch ruler covers a longer distance, it doesn’t do it as accurately as the centimeter ruler. So the trick is to use the cm ruler for more accuracy where the additional length isn’t needed. AND telling the other person which one you used, or they won’t be able to accurately reproduce the part you measured.
In color spaces the difference isn’t a factor of 2.51, but it is still visible in direct comparison.
—
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
This could be a couple different things. Lightroom has a tendency to edit your photos upon importing them. So it could just be going through the editing process the Lightroom does automatically.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=593236259 Peter Steeper
Current web browsers support colour management and will display colours accurately for AdobeRGB if the image is tagged with the colour profile. Otherwise you will get muted images as stated above. Lightroom automatically tags the images with the colour profile when they are exported.
AdobeRGB is larger than the colour gamuts used in commercial print. There are some colours used in commercial print (ie some yellows) which are not contained within the sRGB colour gamut.
If you are printing to an Epson or other photo printer you will be able to print colours that do not exist within the AdobeRGB colour gamut. ProPhotoRGB will preserve all the colours you can print on a good photo printer. You will need to work from RAW files if you plan to convert to ProPhotoRGB.
I posted a video on Flickr this week that demonstrates this.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/psteeper/8481945698/in/photostream
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
While some browsers are adapting AdobeRGB color spaces, not all of them have yet. Most mobile browsers will not adapt to AdobeRGB yet.
As for ProPhotoRGB, you’re absolutely right. When shooting in RAW, you preserve all the colors used with in the image. However, if you outsource your printing, most print labs will not support .CR2 or .NEF files as its too much of a work load to convert correctly. So for printing, its recommend that you convert to AdobeRGB rather than sRGB, so you preserve more colors used for printing.
http://twitter.com/pixelator Christian Wig
As part as I know, Lightroom uses ProPhoto RGB internally, enabling you to keep as much color information as possible until the last step (publish/export/print). So why would you convert to sRGB (instead of keeping ProPhoto RGB) if you need to use Photoshop for a certain part of the workflow?
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
I mentioned that this would allow you to keep the AdobeRGB (or in the RAW files case ProPhotoRGB) and the sRGB file for editing.
Personally, I edit in AdobeRGB for my work, and convert to sRGB upon saving for web, or in other words, use the second method mentioned above.
http://www.facebook.com/stephan.mantler Stephan Mantler
Nice move, incorporating the suggestions I made in reply and then deleting my comment.
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
Stephan,
I didn’t delete your comment. Infact, I wrote a long reply to your comment that wasn’t able to post because your comment was deleted….
Further more, your suggestion was nothing but a typing error on my part. That’s hardly ground breaking discreditation like you suggested.
http://www.facebook.com/stephan.mantler Stephan Mantler
Must be a disqus hickup, then. Strange coincidence.
Anyway, thumbs up on the rewrite. It’s a bit like the image size / print size / dpi / ppi confusion that aspiring photographers often suffer; essentially a simple concept but hard to wrap your head around the first time you’re exposed to it.
http://twitter.com/PeterKremzar Peter Kremzar
I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to bash you down with my comment. I would really love to explain that to you here but as I mentioned this is not an easy topic. It would take several posts to write all that. But if you like I can send you some links to some real good posts and books about this topic.
leethecam
Many or most of the storybook manufacturers request sRGB, as do many printers for other options and you have to be careful choosing your printer if you opt for aRGB.
Personally, I convert all RAWs to sRGB PSD files before retouching. (I use the soft proof option in LR to view as sRGB when adjusting the RAW files).
If I can make it look great with this combination then there are no surprises down the way if I were to convert an aRGB to sRGB.
What hasn’t been discussed are people’s preferences for conversion… absolute / relative etc…?
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
I’m not offended. I do have a pretty good understanding of color space, as I’ve worked with printing for many years now. I’m simply asking to take this post with a gain of salt. Its meant to provide a basic explanation of the two, and not to be as in depth and intense as some of the posts elsewhere might be. This is just an explanation for those who have no idea of the differences.
http://twitter.com/ralphhightower Ralph Hightower
I’ll have to ask the film labs that I use if they scan to AdobeRGB or sRGB.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=593236259 Peter Steeper
All current browsers support colour management and have done so for a few years. This includes Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. They support not only AdobeRGB but will convert from any colour space as long as the image is tagged with the profile. Test it.
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
I did….yesterday. And mobile browsers did not support AdobeRGB.
http://i.imgur.com/SrxRDfS.jpg
http://twitter.com/PeterKremzar Peter Kremzar
But do you think we should consider about the mobile platform?
What I mean is you can’t calibrate and profile phones. There are just two mobile platforms that support that right now. And these are Microsoft Surface Pro (and other tablets that use Windows 8) and Apple iPad.
All the rest (like Android or Windows Phone or iPhone) can’t be calibrated/profiled. Take my Samsung Omnia 7 for example. It has a Super OLED display that has a bit oversaturated colors. You will have wrong colors no matter you have color managed software behind or not.
But sure. I always convert my photos to sRGB for web use no matter of what I wrote above.
Steven Shafer
I am a long time follower of this blog, and this is the first comment I have ever posted. I felt the need.
This article is a wonderful, and accurate to within the confines of its content, guide for people who have yet to deal with that overwhelming world called color management (what I call color wrangling). Yes, there are more advanced discussions to be had; however, I agree that this was not the place for them.
Zach, it was wonderfully informative. Beginning photographers out there, follow this advice, and you are already 1000x more prepared to face this realm of color conundrums.
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
You made my day…. Thanks Steven :-)
http://twitter.com/optimofoto Jon Rune Trengereid
Dont mix Raw files with the ProPhoto RGB Zach. You wont be shooting in ProPhoto RGB when shooting in Raw as you claim. Raw files have no colorspace, and its up to the user/photographer to define what colorspace to use when pixelating the raw-file. Even though I get where you’re going with this article, its off.. way off.
You need to separate between colorspaces for viewing files and for editing files.
J TM
This is correct. ProPhotoRGB is just another color space (with an even bigger gamut than both sRGB and AdobeRGB). But the benefits are few and far between because typical monitors and CMYK printers can’t reproduce the colors at the outer edge of the gamut.
Zach, I know you wanted to keep this article simple, but it would probably be beneficial to explain some of the conversion types such as relative and perceptual, especially since it can make a big difference in the final lresult.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1157232463 Paul GaNun
Any comment for those using Aperture rather than Lightroom?
Tiggmeister
Paul, You can set in Aperture preferences what color space you’d like you external editor to use and whether you’d like it as a psd, tiff or jpg. I use ProPhotoRGB and a 16bit psd or tiff when I export to Photoshop CS6. When you export a version from Aperture it exports as a sRGB tiff or jpeg.
http://twitter.com/georgesocka George Socka
never mind calibrating phones. 99% ( my guess ) of the world sees whatver you are trying to sell on an uncalibrated monitor, in unmanaged ambient light, at sub-optinmal viewing angles that it makes not a hill of beans worth of difference what yu export in.keep your raw files and re-output as required.
Jeffrey Friedl
There is a color space when shooting raw… it’s the native color space of the sensor. That’s why new cameras’ raw files don’t instantly work in Lightroom/Aperture… someone at Adobe/Apple has to figure out what that color space is and push out a software update that includes support for it.
FYI, the in-camera sRGB/aRGB setting *does* have an impact even when shooting raw. The JPEGs embedded within the raw file are converted as per that setting, and (more importantly) the on-camera histogram view is derived from that JPEG.
This article describes it from a Nikon NEF point of view, but I’d think it’s pretty standard across camera makes: http://regex.info/blog/2006-12-08/303
My practical “Introduction to Digital-Image Color Spaces” has been well received over the years: http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/color-spaces-page1
Jeffrey Friedl
iOS browsers are not color managed… I don’t think iOS even allows apps to color-manage images. Even Datacolor’s
SpyderGallery app is not color managed.
Many details here: http://regex.info/blog/2012-03-27/1964
DeWitt Eaton
Great article. I’ve long been told I should shoot RAW in Adobe RGB, but was confused when nearly everything NOT done in house is produced in sRGB. Until I start printing my own work, I’ll stick with sRGB. Thanks again for a very understandable article.
Stephen Tyler
You miss an important complication of using AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB when combined with 8bit per colour images (eg JPEGs). With low bit depth images, the steps between different colours (e.g. slight variations in blue in the sky, or paint on a wall) are almost noticeable with sRGB. AdobeRGB and ProPhotoRGB have larger gamuts, so the colours are further apart. This means that clean, subtle tonal variations develop distinct steps which ruin the image quality. For most real life images, there are very few pixel colours outside the sRGB gamut, so the ability to capture indigo or extreme magenta or cyan is moot. Better to keep the smooth tonal variations for the colours that actually exist in the image.
Joe Gunawan
I have a question when calibrating on a wide-gamut monitor. Is it better to calibrate while in sRGB or aRGB? I’ve been calibrating on aRGB for my ASUS PA246Q P-IPS since I do quite a bit of post-processing on Photoshop.
- Joe Gunawan | Fotosiamo.com
http://twitter.com/Wingalls William J. Ingalls
YES. The web is going mobile faster than ever. If your website (where you display images) isn’t mobile friendly good luck finding a job.
http://twitter.com/Wingalls William J. Ingalls
All reputable labs will scan to AdobeRGB, if they don’t drop them immediately.
Spy Black
I’m not sure why the author states that you can’t convert accurately from sRGB to Adobe RGB. These are colorspace models imposed on RGB data. Data is data. You can impose any colorspace you want. The colorspace model will take the RGB data and modify it relative to the colorspace specification. The RGB data is still the same.
http://zsuttonphoto.com/ Zach Sutton Photography
If you have an image set to sRGB, you cannot correctly convert it to AdobeRGB. It’d be equivalent to trying to put 3 liters of liquid into a 2 liter bottle. You won’t get any additional colors within the color space when converting to AdobeRGB, as the color gamut has already been truncated for sRGB.
https://www.facebook.com/FlexibleVision Roman
I don’t think it is ended because this article is inaccurate ;)
https://www.facebook.com/FlexibleVision Roman
Articles like this cause all the confusion in the internet. It should be deleted or edited by someone who actually know color management!
1. Color space set in camera doesn’t apply to RAW files. It applies to JPGs only.
2. Pictures in AdobeRGB uploaded to WEB are not getting converted to sRGB. They are displayed in sRGB.
http://www.facebook.com/Bass.Jase Jason Schaefer
thanx heaps for the info, have always wondered, you’ve laid it out nice and plainly for me!
https://www.facebook.com/FlexibleVision Roman
When you shoot in RAW you shoot in… RAW. There is no color space or color management. It is only RAW data. First time color space is used is when LR or ACR displays(!) that RAW data on your screen using AdobeRGB. However the file still is not limited to any color space. After applying adjustments in LR or ACR you can export to file limited by chosen color space. The biggest is ProPhotoRGB which is best for farther image manipulation. If it is exported for print AdobeRGB is enough and if it is going for WEB it must be sRGB.
https://www.facebook.com/FlexibleVision Roman
Most likely it is because of JPG compression. Check what is the compression set to in PS. Probably it is value 60. Change it to something over 85 and you will have no problems like this again ;)
http://www.facebook.com/WiZhouPhotography William Zhou
Hmm.. I’m surprised you didn’t mention that LR has systems in place to convert (raw) images to sRGB as you export them into jpegs (you only talked about when exporting into PS). I had to double check. Good article though! I had no idea.
bsandberg
Seriously Roman stop judging this article as something it is not trying to be. It is a simple explanation of a very complicated subject and is meant to be digestible to people who know little to nothing about color spaces. You keep nitpicking his statement on RAW files, we get it already, color space does not apply to RAW. He has explained some fundamental differences in AdobeRGB and sRGB. RAW is in no way a part of this article so drop it. And at no point was I under the impression that he was saying pictures are converted to sRGB when put on the web. If you are so upset about this article start a blog and write your own articles on the matter.
https://www.facebook.com/FlexibleVision Roman
Quote from article: “Since most web browsers have adapted sRGB as its color space, if you
upload an image to the internet with the AdobeRGB gamut, the browser
will convert it to sRGB, and it’ll do a terrible job at it, as shown
below.”
There are thousands of articles on that matter already. Many of them are misleading. Some are good.
That the RAW is not a part of this article is a big part of the issues here.
Settings shown for LR work only for RAW files. If you photograph in JPG these settings will not apply.
It is another “I know something but not really” article.
I recommend this for understanding color management:
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/color-management-printing.htm
Robert Koren
Why bother …..i always remove the color space..
And i do not have any problems with web or print …..
http://www.raulnunes.com/ Raul Nunes
These comments remind me of something I would like to ask you all color experts;
- when I import a NEF file into LR, after a second or two all the colors change and become different from what they really shoul look like.
Is there a way to avoid this?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1579838307 Joris van der Linde
That could be the Camera Calibration Profile Lightroom adds after importing your pictures (Develop Module, scroll all the way down at the menu on the right).

AdobeRGB vs. sRGB

Fstoppers Originals

Popular Articles

Recent Comments

Support Fstoppers

AdobeRGB vs. sRGB

Connect with Fstoppers

Fstoppers Originals

Popular Articles

Recent Comments

Support Fstoppers