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What is Adobe RGB? The colour space explained
In This Article
If you’re in the market for a new monitor, laptop or another device with a screen, you may have come across the term Adobe RGB, but what does it mean?
Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about Adobe RBG.
What is Adobe RGB?
Adobe RGB is a colour space that was originally developed by Adobe. A colour space is a specific group of colours that can be reproduced either digitally on a display or physically in print.
Adobe RGB was introduced as a competitor to the existingsRGBcolour space in 1998, taking advantage of the advanced colour features offered by Adobe Photoshop at the time.
While both Adobe RGB and sRGB are based on the RGB (red, green, blue) colour model, Adobe RGB has a wider range of colours and is capable of producing more of the colours supported in CMYK printing. This makes it a better choice for achieving colour accuracy – particularly when it comes to printed works. This also makes Adobe RGB a popular colour space for professionals.
That being said, sRGB remains the standard colour space used on the web. This makes it a more straightforward choice for most users to work in. It also means there can be extra steps involved if you want a work created in the Adobe RGB colour profile to be displayed accurately across the internet.
Another popular colour space isDCI-P3, a colour space originally developed for cinema.
Regardless of which colour spaces your monitor or device supports, it’ll likely only cover a certain percentage of each of those spaces. This is called a colour gamut and is expressed in percentages.
For example, theApple Studio Displaycovered 82.2% of the Adobe RGB colour gamut in our tests, making it a better choice for creative work than theSamsung M8 Smart Monitor, which scored 78% indicating poorer colour accuracy.
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Hannah joined Trusted Reviews as a staff writer in 2019 after graduating with a degree in English from Royal Holloway, University of London. She’s also worked and studied in the US, holding positions …
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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
