You edit a photo, it looks vivid, you upload it — and online it looks flat or the colours shift. The culprit is almost always a colour profile mismatch. Here is what is going on and how to avoid it.
What a colour profile is
A colour profile (or colour space) defines the range of colours an image can contain and how the numbers in the file map to actual colours. Two files with identical pixel values can look different if they use different profiles.
The three you'll meet
- sRGB — the universal standard for the web. Its gamut is smaller, but it displays consistently across virtually every screen and browser.
- Adobe RGB — a wider gamut favoured in print and professional photography, capturing more saturated greens and cyans.
- Display P3 — a modern wide gamut used by recent Apple and high-end displays, popular for vivid on-screen imagery.
Why images look wrong online
If you export in Adobe RGB or P3 and a browser or app ignores the embedded profile, it interprets the wide-gamut numbers as sRGB — and the colours desaturate or shift. This is the classic "my photo looks dull on the web" problem.
Which to use
- Web → convert to sRGB before exporting. It is the safe default that looks the same everywhere.
- Print → follow your print shop's spec, often Adobe RGB or a CMYK profile.
- Wide-gamut showcase → Display P3 with the profile embedded, accepting that non-P3 screens will show a narrower version.
The simple rule
For anything going on the web, convert to sRGB and embed the profile. It removes the guesswork and guarantees your colours look as intended for the widest audience.