Photo agency 500px is soft-launching full wide-gamut image support on the web, the ability to search by colour profile, and, for those using Chrome browsers, the site will automatically deliver WebP format imagery.
With recent wide-gamut adoption growth in displays, smartphones, and laptops, 500px is now able to stay truer to the photographer’s original vision, delivering better-looking images and reducing bandwidth usage by up to 25 percent. Previously the company had converted non-sRGB images to sRGB for the broadest display compatibility – the industry norm – but now delivers images with wide-gamut profiles (such as Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, and Display P3) in their original forms. Users looking for wide-gamut images can filter by colour profile during any image search on 500px’s website.
“Though sRGB has been standard in our industry for many years, with today’s broad adoption of iPhones and wide-gamut displays we can finally showcase each image in a more true-to-life way and allow searching by color profile,” said Kelly Thompson, Vice President of 500px. “Our flexible image resizing and delivery system renders WebP compressed files to browsers and apps that support the format, further enhancing the experience with smaller file sizes and quicker downloads. As more efficient file compression options arise, we’ll be leading the way delivering those formats to our members.”