Assigning the sRGB profile to an Adobe RGB file instead of converting it, which relabels the numbers without correcting them and shifts every colour.
Colour
sRGB
Also called standard rgb, srgb colour space or iec 61966-2-1. Here is what it means, when it changes what you export, and what people get wrong.
ColourRuns on your deviceUpdated 10 August 2026
The short answer
sRGB is the default colour space of the web and of most consumer cameras, phones and monitors. Standardised as IEC 61966-2-1, it fixes exact red, green and blue primaries, a D65 white point and a transfer curve, so a given RGB value means the same colour across devices.
Updated
The short version
sRGB at a glance
| Quick fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Standard | IEC 61966-2-1 |
| White point | D65 |
| Primaries | Same as Rec. 709 |
| Transfer curve | Piecewise, approximating gamma 2.2 |
| Assumed by | Most software when a file carries no profile |
| Best for | Web delivery, listings, general sharing |
Slide the table sideways to see every column.
What does the sRGB standard actually define?
Three things, and they are what turn an RGB number into a real colour.
- Primaries. The exact chromaticities of red, green and blue, shared with the Rec. 709 television standard.
- White point. D65, a daylight-referenced white.
- Transfer function. How stored values map to light output. It is a piecewise curve, a short linear segment near black followed by a power segment, and it approximates a gamma of about 2.2 rather than being a pure 2.2 power function.
The specification also describes a reference viewing environment, which is why images mastered for sRGB assume a moderately dim room rather than direct sunlight.
Why do Adobe RGB exports look flat online?
Adobe RGB spreads the same 0 to 255 range over a wider set of colours. A saturated red that sits at the edge of Adobe RGB uses a lower number than the same visual red would in sRGB.
If software that ignores colour profiles reads those numbers as sRGB, every saturated colour lands short of where it should be, and the picture looks dull, flat and slightly grey. The reverse also happens: an sRGB file interpreted as a wide space looks garish. The fix is not to change the tag but to convert to sRGB on export, which recalculates the numbers so the colour stays put.
When is it worth leaving sRGB?
Keep your master files in a wider space if you edit heavily or send work to print, because there is more room to push colour before it clips, and print processes can reach some cyans and greens that sRGB cannot. Display P3 is also a reasonable delivery space for your own site, provided the files are properly tagged and the pipeline never strips the profile.
For marketplace listings, sRGB remains the safe answer. Platform and print-on-demand guidance commonly asks for it, thumbnails and previews get regenerated by systems you do not control, and any of those steps can drop a profile you were relying on.
What people get wrong about srgb
Each one is a real failure mode, not a style preference.
Editing in ProPhoto RGB at 8 bits per channel, where the space is so wide that the steps between values become visible as banding.
Assuming a screen that looks vivid is showing sRGB correctly, when a wide-gamut display in an uncalibrated mode oversaturates everything.
Stripping profiles to save a few kilobytes, then wondering why exports from a wide-gamut camera look wrong on a listing page.
Questions people ask
sRGB, answered
The follow-up questions people search for once they have the definition.
Should I export product photos in sRGB?
Yes, for anything going to a marketplace, a web store or social media. sRGB is what browsers and platform pipelines assume when no profile is present, so exporting in it removes the main way colour goes wrong between your screen and a buyer's.
What happens if my image has no colour profile at all?
Most software treats it as sRGB. That is correct if the file really is sRGB and wrong if it came from a wide-gamut camera setting, in which case the colours render duller than intended. Tagging the file removes the guesswork.
Is Display P3 replacing sRGB?
Not yet as a delivery default. Display P3 is now common on phones and laptops and is a good choice where you control tagging end to end, but sRGB remains the fallback that anything untagged is assumed to be, so it stays the safest export for third-party platforms.
Does converting to sRGB lose quality?
It loses colours that sit outside sRGB, mostly deeply saturated greens, cyans and reds, which get mapped inward. Everything within sRGB survives intact. Keep the wide-gamut master and treat the sRGB version as a delivery copy.
Same cluster
More from the glossary
Neighbouring entries, so every term in the set is one hop from every other.
Super-resolution
Super-resolution uses a trained model to produce a higher-resolution version of an image, adding detail that plain interpolation cannot.
Sharpening
Sharpening increases contrast along edges so a photo reads as crisper.
SVG
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is an XML file that describes shapes, paths and text as mathematical instructions rather than pixels.
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Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. Every link opens the specification, standard or documentation the claim was read at.
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