Have you heard about Adobe 98? sRGB? both of these are Color Spaces - basically a way of describing colors that a given device (monitor, printer, camera) can display or capture. These are not the only two color spaces, just the two most popular in photography. Think of a color space as a cereal bowl - some bowls are larger than others and can hold more cereal.  In photography, some devices can display or capture more colors than other devices... for example, a pro digital SLR can capture more colors than a cell phone camera. Thus it has a larger color space than the cell phone camera.

Now to the simple explanation - Adobe 98 is a larger color space than sRGB - sounds good right? well, not so fast... most computer monitors are not capable of displaying all the colors available in Adobe 98. Most monitors are sRGB. In addition, almost all photo lab printers are sRGB also. Now back to the cereal bowl analogy... so Adobe 98 is a big bowl of cereal... what if you want to print out an Adobe 98 image on an sRGB printer? well, you're going to pour that 16 ounce bowl of cereal into a 13 ounce bowl - and some of it is going to spill out and you won't be getting it back. It's actually a bit worse than that, it's going to taste bad too for some reason! Adobe 98 images printed to an sRGB printer usually look flat and a bit blue/green. Skin tones look a bit deadish.

So who should use Adobe 98 and who should use sRGB? Most portrait and wedding photographers should be using sRGB - in fact the only people that should really be using Adobe 98 are those who are shooting for high end magazines and other offset printed products, or those who are printing to a pro level ink jet printer and fully understand color management. If you are going to your local lab for prints, you should be using sRGB.

Now keep in mind this is just a simple explanation, meant for those who are just starting out or are unfamiliar with color spaces.