Adobe RGB vs sRGB for Client Delivery

Four statements from the published web standards settle this. They are worth reading in their own words, because each is narrower than the advice built on top of it.

One. sRGB is the default, and untagged images are treated as sRGB. CSS Color Module Level 4 states that colours specified in HTML "and untagged images must be treated as being in the sRGB color space". That is a requirement. An image with no embedded profile is not undefined; it is defined as sRGB.

Two. A valid embedded profile must be honoured. The same specification states that where a colour profile is present and valid, the image "must be treated as being in the specified color space". Embedding is what moves a file out of the default and into the space you chose.

Three. sRGB is the implicit space in CSS itself. MDN describes the wider-gamut colour function as naming a space "rather than the implicit sRGB color space that most of the other color functions operate in". The default runs deeper than images.

Four. Wider spaces are addressable by name. The predefined spaces documented on MDN include srgb, srgb-linear, display-p3, a98-rgb, prophoto-rgb and rec2020, and support "can be detected with the color-gamut CSS media feature". Wide gamut on the web is named and testable. It is simply not the default.

A JPEG is a grid of numbers, and the numbers alone do not say what colour they mean. A colour space is the key that turns them into colours, by defining which primaries and which transfer curve they are measured against.

An embedded profile is that key travelling inside the file. Strip it out and the key is gone, so the receiving software falls back to the default. On the web that fallback is specified: the file is treated as sRGB.

State the mechanism exactly. If you export Adobe RGB (1998) and do not embed the profile, the file is treated as sRGB. Its numbers are then interpreted against a different set of primaries than the ones you edited them against. The numbers never changed. The key that explains them did.

That is why "always export sRGB" is the weaker half of a rule. An untagged sRGB file lands on the right default by accident. An untagged Adobe RGB (1998) file does not. A tagged file in either space carries its own answer, so the habit to build is embedding, every time, in every space.

Once embedding is automatic, choosing the space becomes a routing question. You are asking what happens to this file after it leaves you, and whether that journey is colour managed end to end.

The pattern is plain. The wider space belongs where somebody asked for it and will manage it. The default belongs everywhere else, which in practice is most client delivery.

This page is not an argument for sRGB. There are jobs where exporting sRGB is the sloppy choice, and they share one trait: the rest of the file's journey is colour managed by someone who knows it.

• A lab or press supplier specifies it. They have tested their chain against that input space. Send what they asked for.
• The file will be edited again. A retoucher working in a wide space should not receive work already narrowed for the web.
• The client has a production department. Commercial and editorial work routes through people whose job is output. Ask once, keep the answer in the job file.
• You are handing over a master. If the client bought the archive copy, it should carry the space you graded in.

In all four, the profile is still embedded. The wide space decides which key to attach, never whether to attach one.

One note on sourcing. Everything above about how the web treats colour comes from the two specifications listed at the end. The line that circulates as a software maker's official recommendation is not something we could trace to a published source, so it is not repeated here, and neither is any gamut percentage.

Six items. A minute to set up the preset, nothing after that.

• Pick the space for the destination, not for your working habit. The space you edit in and the space you deliver in are separate choices.
• Confirm the profile is embedded. This is the setting that matters most and the one most often left off.
• Export twice when a job has two destinations. The web file and the lab file are not the same export.
• Put the space in the filename. A -sRGB or -AdobeRGB suffix stops the two sets being confused months later.
• Open one exported file and check the profile is listed in your operating system's information panel. One file per preset, not one per job.
• Save it as a preset. A decision you rebuild by hand is one you will eventually get wrong.

Clients do not need a colour management lecture. They need one sentence telling them what they have and what to do if it does not fit. Paste this into the delivery email or the gallery welcome note:

"These files are sRGB with the colour profile embedded, which is the right version for phones, websites and social posts. If a print shop or designer asks for a different colour space, send me their requirement and I will export that version."

It tells the client the file is correct for what they will actually do, and gives them a route to ask instead of quietly sending your web export to a lab.

This is where the two-export rule meets how a gallery works, so it is worth being straightforward about our own product.

On clientgallery.io, ordinary uploads are proof JPEGs, compressed in the browser before they are hosted. That is what keeps a large gallery quick to open on a phone. It also means a proof is a re-encoded viewing copy: the right file for browsing and picking, not the file you colour managed for a lab.

The profiled master travels separately. Full-resolution delivery is a paid mechanism: you upload one full-resolution ZIP per gallery, it stays live for three days per handoff and can be re-uploaded whenever the client needs it again, with 100 GB of standing ZIPs per account. That ZIP is where a print-destined export belongs, in whichever space the lab asked for, profile embedded.

The plan around it is one price: $10 a month or $100 a year, unlimited under fair use, with ceilings of 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB of proofs per paid account. A free account holds 5 GB. Galleries hold JPEG photos; we do not warehouse RAW files, which is part of why the price stays flat.

• CSS Color Module Level 4, W3C. https://www.w3.org/TR/css-color-4/ Fetched 23 September 2026. Source for the sRGB default, untagged images, and the requirement to honour a valid embedded profile.
• color() CSS function, MDN Web Docs. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/color_value/color Fetched 23 September 2026. Source for sRGB as the implicit space of CSS colour functions, the list of predefined spaces, and detection with the color-gamut media feature.

Product figures on this page come from clientgallery.io itself, verified in our own application code on 23 September 2026.