Question re: Soft proofing in LightRoom 5

ghealy

Having shot thousand of images, I have only just come to actually printing some to be hung on a wall.

I have watched a interesting video by Julieanne Kost on Soft proofing in LR4 and learned quite a bit. I have installed the necessary printer profiles (ezprint.icc for Smugmug & Noritus3411_Gls.icc for Costco). I have played with correcting out-of-gamut colours on images and have managed to get much closer to what I see on my calibrated (Colormuki display) Viewsonic vx2450wm LED monitor.

I process my images in aRGB but export files to be printed or displayed on the web in sRGB.

In the Smugmug help page on Soft-proofing in Photoshop, it states that one should NOT check the boxes to simulate paper & ink. Would this same caution apply also to soft-proofing in Lightroom? And would it apply to any printer profile, i.e. Costco as well as Smugmug produced prints?

To be honest, I wonder why I even bother processing images in anything but sRGB, seeing as I only display on the web and when I do print, it is through consumer-type businesses like SmugMug or Costco.

Any tips and/or suggestions to help produces better prints within the limitations (output sources) referred to above would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

ian408

Have a look at this thread for the discussion that followed that particular tutorial. Lots of good info there.

ghealy

Thanks, Ian, for the link. Though probably due to my own ignorance, I didn't find it very helpful as the discussion was Photoshop specific, not Lightroom, and it did not address my question if I should not use the simulate paper & ink on other printer profiles as it is recommended for SmugMug's EzPrint profile.

arodney

Two video's on LR's soft proofing:

http://digitaldog.net/files/LR4_softproof.mov

http://digitaldog.net/files/LR4_softproof2.mov

arodney

ghealy wrote: »

should not use the simulate paper & ink on other printer profiles as it is recommended for SmugMug's EzPrint profile.

Pointless as you don't have an actual output profile to use (you are forced to send sRGB).

ghealy

arodney wrote: »

Pointless as you don't have an actual output profile to use (you are forced to send sRGB).

Andrew: Thank you for the links. I was fortunate that someone else had already pointed me to your two very informative video. Most of what I have learned about soft-proofing in Lightroom, came from those videos

Your videos talk about output to one's own local printer. So one having made the necessary ('desired' might be the better word) tweaks to your image in soft-proofing, one switches to the output module to print using that specific printer profile.

But when trying to produce a file to be printed at a 'commercial' lab (i.e. EzPrint a la Smugmug or Costco), Lightroom does not have an output profile to use as you point out above.

It was suggested to me that I should pass the soft-proofed tweaked file (16bit TIFF using ProPhotoRGB colour space) to Photoshop (in my case PS CS4). Do a 'Convert to Profile' with the supplied commercial Lab's printer profile and then save as a max quality JPEG (letting the CMS do the gamut translation similar to what you recommend in your second video). The produced JPEG is then sent to the photo lab with the instructions 'Do Not Colour Correct'

Do you see any benefits to in that step (passing to PS CS4 for Convert to Profile)? Or would I be just as well off if I simply saved the file as a JPEG in Lightroom? In that case, would I still request the lab not to make any colour corrections?

Appreciate any suggestions you might have.

arodney

ghealy wrote: »

Do you see any benefits to in that step (passing to PS CS4 for Convert to Profile)? Or would I be just as well off if I simply saved the file as a JPEG in Lightroom? In that case, would I still request the lab not to make any colour corrections?

Depends: IF the profile you have is the actual profile used to convert the data and the lab will pass the numbers "as is" to the device, fine. If not, soft proofing isn't doing you much good.

ghealy

Again thanks, Andrew. The images are processed without any colour corrections. Just ran off 4 - 5x7 and 1 - 8x12 and was quite pleased with the outcome. A Big thank you, kind sir, for yoru excellent video tutorial which helped immensely in understanding that mystery world of colour spaces, printer profiles and soft-proofing.

- Gene