Camera and print workflows often use wider or print-oriented colour spaces. Browsers assume sRGB when no profile is embedded, so a CMYK or untagged wide-gamut file can look dull or shifted.
Exporting in sRGB keeps the colour shoppers see close to the product's real colour.
RGB stands for red, green and blue: each pixel mixes the three, and in an ordinary 8-bit image each channel runs from 0 to 255. Pure white is 255, 255, 255, the value a pure white background requires; sRGB defines which real colours these numbers stand for on a screen.
What sRGB does for a product photo
A colour space is the agreement that turns the numbers in an image file into colours on a screen. sRGB is the agreement that browsers, phones and marketplace apps assume, so a file saved in sRGB shows the same colours almost everywhere.
For a seller this is about returns as much as about looks. When the red on the listing is not the red in the parcel, the product comes back. Keeping every image in sRGB from export to upload removes one of the common causes.
Where the colour goes wrong
Most colour shifts happen at export. A photo edited in a wider colour space and saved without conversion looks flat and pale in a browser, because the browser reads its numbers as if they were sRGB. A file prepared for print in CMYK can turn dull, and some systems refuse it.
The second cause is a missing colour profile. The profile is a small tag inside the file that names its colour space. Without it each program guesses, and two screens can show two different colours from the same file.
sRGB, RGB and wide-gamut screens
RGB is the general method of mixing red, green and blue light; sRGB is one precise definition of it. Adobe RGB and the wide-gamut spaces of newer phones are other definitions that can describe more saturated colours, which is why cameras and phones offer them.
A wider space does not make a product image more accurate online. Shoppers see it through software that expects sRGB, and many marketplaces convert or re-save uploads. Converting to sRGB yourself, with the profile embedded, keeps the result under your control.
sRGB and related colour terms
- CMYK
- CMYK is the colour model of printing, built on four inks. A file meant for a printed catalogue has to be converted to sRGB before it goes on a product page.
- White balance
- White balance is set when the photo is taken or edited and decides whether white looks neutral, warm or cool. sRGB cannot repair a colour cast; it only makes sure the corrected colours are shown as intended.
Pure white background- A pure white background is a colour value: the highest value in all three channels. That value is white in every RGB colour space, so a clean white background does not show that a file is in sRGB; the colours of the product do.
- Image file format
- The file format is the container, such as JPEG, PNG or WebP. Each of them can hold an sRGB image; the colour space is a separate setting from the format.
A colour checklist before upload
- The export is set to sRGB, and the colour profile is embedded in the file.
- The file is in RGB, not CMYK, even when the same picture was also prepared for print.
- The colour was compared with the product itself in daylight, not only judged on one screen.
- White, black and skin tones look neutral, which shows that the white balance was corrected before export.
- The image was viewed once in a browser and once on a phone, since those are the screens shoppers use.