To display working space options in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, choose Edit > Color Settings. In Acrobat, select the Color Management category of the Preferences dialog box.

To view a description of any profile, select the profile and then position the pointer over the profile name. The description appears at the bottom of the dialog box.

RGB

Determines the RGB color space of the application. In general, it’s best to choose Adobe RGB or sRGB, rather than the profile for a specific device (such as a monitor profile).

sRGB is recommended when you prepare images for the web, because it defines the color space of the standard monitor used to view images on the web. sRGB is also a good choice when you work with images from consumer-level digital cameras, because most of these cameras use sRGB as their default color space.

Adobe RGB is recommended when you prepare documents for print, because Adobe RGB’s gamut includes some printable colors (cyans and blues in particular) that can’t be defined using sRGB. Adobe RGB is also a good choice when working with images from professional-level digital cameras, because most of these cameras use Adobe RGB as their default color space.

CMYK

Determines the CMYK color space of the application. All CMYK working spaces are device-dependent, meaning that they are based on actual ink and paper combinations. The CMYK working spaces Adobe supplies are based on standard commercial print conditions.

Gray (Photoshop) or Grayscale (Acrobat)

Determines the grayscale color space of the application.

Spot (Photoshop)

Specifies the dot gain to use when displaying spot color channels and duotones.

Note: In Acrobat, you can use the color space in an embedded output intent instead of a document color space for viewing and printing. Select Output Intent Overrides Working Spaces. For more information on output intents, see Complete Acrobat Help.

Adobe applications ship with a standard set of working space profiles that have been recommended and tested by Adobe Systems for most color management workflows. By default, only these profiles appear in the working space menus. To display additional color profiles that you have installed on your system, select Advanced Mode (Illustrator and InDesign) or More Options (Photoshop). A color profile must be bi‑directional (that is, contain specifications for translating both into and out of color spaces) in order to appear in the working space menus.