sRGB vs Adobe RGB vs P3 for Client Delivery

What the three colour spaces actually are

A colour space is a recipe for turning the numbers in a file into colours on a screen. The same three numbers (say 200, 40, 40) mean a different red in each space. The file only means what you intended if the viewing software knows which recipe applies.

• sRGB was standardised as IEC 61966-2-1 in 1999. It is the web default: a browser treats an image with no profile as sRGB.
• Adobe RGB (1998) has wider green and cyan primaries, designed so a CMYK press could be simulated on a screen. It matters mostly for print.
• Display P3 takes the primaries of the DCI-P3 cinema space, a D65 white point and the sRGB transfer curve. Apple made it the native space of its recent iPhones, iPads and Macs.

The table describes tendencies, not measurements. The practical point is the last column: the wider the space, the more ways a proof can display wrongly on a screen you do not control.

Where a wide-gamut proof goes wrong

Colour-managed software reads the embedded profile and converts. Software that is not colour managed ignores the profile and treats the numbers as sRGB. Both behaviours are common in the chain between your export and the client's eyes.

An Adobe RGB file shown without conversion looks muted, because the sRGB recipe reads its saturated values as less saturated than you meant. A Display P3 file shown the same way shifts the same direction by less. The failure is silent: nothing warns the viewer, and they just conclude the image looks dull.

Places where profiles get dropped or ignored:

• Email previews and some in-app viewers that show a thumbnail without reading the profile.
• Messaging apps that recompress images on send, which can strip metadata, ICC profiles included.
• Older or office-issue monitors that cannot display the wider range at all, so converted colours are clipped.
• Screenshots, which clients often forward instead of the file; a screenshot is whatever their screen drew.

Why sRGB is the right default for proofs

A proof exists so a client can say yes or no. It has to be unambiguous, so the safest file is one the viewer cannot mis-handle. An sRGB JPEG with an embedded sRGB profile is correct in a colour-managed browser and also correct, by design, in one that ignores profiles.

That property is worth more than the extra gamut, because most frames never use it. A portrait of a person in a grey studio sits well inside sRGB. The colours that fall outside are saturated ones: a neon sign, deep ocean blue, a vivid red dress under studio strobes.

There is also a bit-depth argument. An 8-bit JPEG has 256 levels per channel, so 256 × 256 × 256 = 16,777,216 possible colours whatever the space. Stretch those levels over a wider gamut and each step is larger, which makes banding in smooth gradients like skies more likely. sRGB spends the same budget on a smaller range, so the steps are finer.

The conversion is also one-way for proofs. You keep the master in a wide space; you convert a copy for review. Nothing is lost from the original, which is the same principle as keeping masters out of the review loop generally. Our piece on what metadata to strip before delivery covers the other thing an export recipe should handle in the same step.

When Display P3 or Adobe RGB is worth delivering

Wide gamut earns its place in a narrow set of situations.

Even then, deliver the review copy in sRGB and the final in the wide space. If a brand red matters, show the client a proof, tell them it may look slightly less vivid than the final, and let the final carry the full colour. Adobe RGB belongs on your side of the desk: edit in it if your monitor and printer chain support it, and convert on export.

A rule you can follow on every shoot

1. Edit and archive in the widest space your pipeline handles (ProPhoto, Adobe RGB or P3), at 16-bit where possible.
2. Export the review copy as sRGB JPEG with the profile embedded. Use the convert-to-profile option, not just assign, so the numbers change.
3. Check the export in a browser, not only inside your editor. If it looks different there, the profile did not travel.
4. Tell the client what they are seeing in one sentence: it is a screen proof and the final may differ slightly in saturated colours.
5. Make a second, wider export for the final only when the delivery target is known to handle it.

Doing this by hand per frame invites mistakes, which is why it belongs in a saved export recipe. If you hand retouching to someone else, put the colour space in the recipe so each round comes back the same; the notes in what breaks during batch delivery are about exactly that kind of silent drift. Keep the review itself in one place, such as a review link, so everyone looks at the same converted file rather than whatever their inbox rendered.

Assign versus convert: the mistake behind most dull exports

Photoshop and Lightroom both offer two operations that sound alike. Assign profile changes the label and leaves the numbers alone, so the picture changes appearance. Convert to profile recalculates the numbers so the picture keeps its appearance in the new space. For a proof you almost always want convert.

A common failure goes like this. The master is in Adobe RGB. Someone assigns sRGB to it, exports, and the saturated greens suddenly look wrong, so they push saturation by hand to compensate. The corrected file now looks fine on their screen and over-cooked everywhere else. Converting once at export avoids the whole chain of fixes.

Two checks catch this before the client does. First, open the exported JPEG in a browser and compare it with the editor. Second, look at the profile name stored in the file: it should say sRGB, not the working space. Export presets that include the conversion step are the reliable fix, because they remove the decision from a tired afternoon.

Talking to the client about colour without a lecture

Most clients do not want to learn about gamut. They want to know whether to trust what they see. A short line at the top of a review is enough: this is a screen proof, colours may differ slightly from the final, especially bright reds and greens. It sets the expectation once, so a flat-looking red does not become a revision round.

When a client does question a colour, ask where they are looking before touching the file. A phone in low-power mode, a laptop with a night-shift filter, and an office monitor with the brightness at maximum can all shift a correct image. The questions that help are cheap: which device, which app, and whether the screenshot came from the same place. Our guide to translating vague client feedback covers how to turn "it looks off" into something you can act on.

Brand-critical colour is the one exception worth planning for. If a logo red or a product colour must match a swatch, agree up front that a physical sample or a calibrated reference is the authority, and that screens are for composition and retouching. That stops an unwinnable argument about which of three screens is right.