ProPhoto RGB v. sRGB color space

I’m curious. I need to jot this down and maybe reroute back to this post once I have time and once I have unfortunate developer to bug on the office.

Recently, I noticed an uptick of color display questions from users that contacting us. The question always the same:

“Why do my pictures look dull on the phone?”

This is a really interesting situation. The images look good and vibrant on the desktop/laptop, but once you check the website on the phone — bam — the dullest color.

The cause is actually this:

sRGB vs Adobe RGB vs ProPhoto RGB: Color Spaces Explained

TL;DR images with ProPhoto RGB will definitely have duller look on mobile phones, especially on iPhones. To rectify it, you will need to export your images to sRGB format.

But! Please indulge me on this. But! Here’s what makes me curious: Most — if not all — of the users who ask the color display question is non-professional/they are not professional photographers/designers/illustrators.

They upload the images to their websites/blogs just like any other regular folks — Add image, or drag-and-drop, and that’s it. They didn’t do any heavyweight image editing prior uploading their images.

Then it happened to me just now. The previous post has some images with so many details, and I swear the red color on the pictures is really vivid and bold.

I opened my WP for iOS app, then uploaded the images using Image block. Finished the post, then published.

I have side by side comparison. The one on the left is the picture on my Photos app, the one on the right is the picture on my live site (Chrome mobile.)

I also able to confirm I didn’t do any adjustments on my iPhone’s settings.

I’m curious. Something must have happened; I’m thinking a change on how iOS processed the images (??? Maybe???) Also, it seems like this happens on mobile display only. The images look okay on desktop.

Tomorrow, I’m going to check the image profile and see what color space the image is.

Update:

The color space is RGB… ? (None of both possibilities LOL)

I would agree with Ditaa. Most probably iOS automatically compress picture for mobile devices and the differences just becoming more noticeable recently.