RGB vs SRGB

Red, Green, and Blue are the 3 most basic colorants that make every possible color we can compose in mostly all of our technological innovations particularly in digital imaging. The thing we consider as “all possible colors” produced or emitted in our monitors, printers, other displays and digital imaging devices are what we call, or can be found, in an RGB color space.

In analogy, you can think of three colored lights (red, green, and blue) being beamed onto a white wall. When all lights are being rayed with the same intensity, you will get white. Now if you only shine green and red ones, you will get a yellow wall. Combining different colorants will obviously result in other colors. Additionally, dimming or intensifying the ray of colors will also result in many other colors as well. For instance, in the combination of red and green, dimming the green will have a result in an orange wall.

In short, the three colorants and their respective intensities are factors for producing a result of color. The set of all possible colors is what you call the “gamut”.

Human eyes or how people perceive light and colors is very similar — but not identical — to the RGB color space. The more frequently used color spaces are sRGB and Adobe RGB. The more popular of the two is sRGB as it has been more commonly used in the past decade principally in digital and HD cameras, HDTVs, and computer displays. In other words, sRGB is the color space of choice when it comes to consumer applications. It was HP (Hewlett Packard), in cooperation with Microsoft, which created a standard RGB color space called sRGB in the mid-90s.

The main drawback of sRGB is its limited gamut. The Adobe RGB color space decisively “out-gamuts” sRGB by a wide margin. Adobe has even made a color space with an ever wider set of color possibilities and called it Adobe Wide gamut RGB. This solves the sRGB’s problem of leaving out a lot of highly saturated colors that is considered essential in some industries. Nevertheless, Adobes RGB color spaces are only preferred in graphic design industry and being integrated into medium-grade cameras.

Summary:

1. RGB is an acronym for the three basic colors used in color spaces ‘“ Red, Green, and Blue.

2. RGB color space is a general term and it basically signifies “all possible colors” used or integrated in a particular hardware/software.

3. sRGB is a specific kind of RGB color space developed by the combined efforts of HP and Microsoft.

4. sRGB is very popular but has a limited gamut; its gamut is dwarfed by Adobe RGB, another kind of RGB color space.

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