What are color profiles and color spaces?
This is a big topic… A color profile describes a color space, which provides color-aware applications information about what colors the numbers in a digital image represent so that they can be displayed accurately on a variety of output devices such as printers and monitors. Not all imaging applications are color profile/ color space aware. The “standard” profile used on the web and by consumers (including most photo printing services) is called sRGB; this profile will be handled correctly by all applications. The images we provide to you in JPEG format use this profile. The images we provide in TIFF form, however, use the Adobe RGB color profile, which allows for the representation of a wider range of colors (i.e., a larger color gamut). For more information, we suggest that you explore the links on our links page.
