Much to find on the internet explaining to you why you should use adobe or standard rgb. From what I found was a 50-50 mix why you should use one and other. Use s-rgb because.... use a-rgb because... And all have good arguments why you should do so. Bottom line is that you can't tell the difference if you can't compare one and other. Another fact is that most consumer camera's (point-and-shoot) don't offer the option to select adobe rgb so why bother. If you should shoot only raw then you can skip this story because it only applies to jpeg and when you're shooting raw format try saving your pictures in the two famous colorspaces.
So as mentioned and if you read the stories online, it has to do with colorspace. And it is true. Looking at an adobe rgb photo looks a bit dull, non vibrant. Srgb is punchy and really there, but there is a catch.
For starters, if you can't tell the difference between the following photos try using an other browser like Chrome. Internet explorer uses s rgb on all photos. Second, this is intended to show you the difference not in colorspace but (and here is the catch I was talking about) shadowwork. Let's take a look.
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| adobe rgb |
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| s rgb |
Here you can see the nice "saturation" of s-rgb. The first is a bit "dusty"like. The second is more vibrant. And agian, if you can't see the difference try another browser. The difference is most obvious for the restaurant sign in the middle right.
Still this is the same as all the other stories. So one for s-rgb?
Shot was taken at Landal Lommerbergen if you wanted to know.
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| adobe rgb |
Okay, to be honest. In the first example s rgb has the edge. For the coming examples, not quite.Here you can see a clear difference. Again the top photo is dull, lacking that sweet spot. But look again beneath the terrace. And here you see the effect of a smaller colorspace on your shadow or low light area.
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| s rgb |
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| adobe rgb |
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| s rgb |
Here the effect is more visible and although s-rgb (the bottom one) is "punchier" the top dragon is more in balance with its surroundings. And you see significant more detail than the s rgb pic.
So there you have it. Looking at the pictures there is no clear winner. Both of them are pretty useful. But if you want an advice without the 50/50 feeling. Go for adobe. You can always refer to s rgb with almost any photo editor. You can't do it the other way around. S rgb is a smaller space the adobe. Although the compare is a bit off, but compare it with mp3 or a cd. Both sound nice but the fact is the mp3 has less info/data than a cd track. But can you tell the difference? Most of my photos on this blog are shot in adobe without "converting" them to s rgb. And to confuse some more, most raw capable camera's are much better with there jpg output when set to srgb...
