The 3 color spaces explained

Understanding color spaces is one of the most important concepts in digital photography and image processing. If you’ve ever wondered why your photos sometimes look different on the web, in print, or across different devices, color space is usually the reason. In this lesson, we’ll break down the three major color spaces photographers encounter during editing and RAW conversion: sRGB, Adobe RGB, and ProPhoto RGB. Once you understand how these color spaces differ — and more importantly, how much color information each one can contain — your entire editing workflow will make far more sense. One of the biggest misconceptions photographers have is believing they should edit in the same color space they plan to export. That is not true. You should edit in the largest practical color space — ProPhoto RGB — and only convert to smaller spaces at the final output stage. Once photographers truly understand the differences between sRGB, Adobe RGB, and ProPhoto RGB, color management stops being mysterious. It becomes a logical system designed to preserve image quality from capture to final output.