Caution!Especially in this page but it's the state of mind of the website in general, I want to share with you my experience of photographer using color management for twelve years now. So go further simple theoretical approaches telling us that Adobe RGB is broader than sRGB hence.. better!!
So many criteria come into line. Moreover, especially at the beginning of my 'practical experiments', I often had this thought: theoretically there should be a huge difference and yet, frankly, differences are not always that big really. Why? You should understand better why I like ProPhoto very much, but also why I defend sRGB by reading this page..
It is by knowing well the differences between color spaces, from 'small' sRGB to 'broad' ProPhoto that you'll make the right choice. And you'll see that even if the smaller one does less, less is often enough! For more experienced users, we'll also see a few points that enable to optimize your choice. Then, I'll show you concretely how to choose in four practical examples..
Because of a mistake in profile assignment at the opening of a photo, I often hear that with sRGB profile colors are dull!!! That sRGB is not so great. That it confirms the reputation of this color space. While it's just a technical mistake! Let's see that in details.
To be displayed in Photoshop, a photo has to have an ICC profile. We've seen it in the previous page, choosing your working space in Photoshop . It's the ICC profile that will give it its 'true' colors. (I recommend you to read my page about profile assignment for further details. Indeed, an RGB value never represents a color (hence L*a*b*) theoretically. It is the color space or the ICC profile assigned that will give a colorimetric 'meaning' to an RGB value. So for a same RGB value (say 0, 255, 0), I won't get the same green (L*a*b*) in sRGB or in Adobe RGB: