Do you use soft proofing?

jfriend

The go-cart images in this thread and the new-found ability to create (accidentally or on purpose) very vibrant colors in LAB mode caused me to really want to learn about out of gamut colors and how to understand when you have them in Photoshop and what you should do about them.

Though I barely understand how this gamut warning and printer profile stuff works in Photoshop, I think these go-cart images have colors that are out of gamut for the EzPrint printers (and probably others).

Are there any great tutorials out there on how to really use soft proofing in your normal daily workflow? And, while I generally know how to get a profile for commercial printers like EzPrints or WHCC, is there a way to get a profile for consumer printers (I have an HP Photosmart)?

Also, do many of you use soft proofing?

Andy

jfriend wrote:

The go-cart images in this thread and the new-found ability to create (accidentally or on purpose) very vibrant colors in LAB mode caused me to really want to learn about out of gamut colors and how to understand when you have them in Photoshop and what you should do about them.

Though I barely understand how this gamut warning and printer profile stuff works in Photoshop, I think these go-cart images have colors that are out of gamut for the EzPrint printers (and probably others).

Are there any great tutorials out there on how to really use soft proofing in your normal daily workflow? And, while I generally know how to get a profile for commercial printers like EzPrints or WHCC, is there a way to get a profile for consumer printers (I have an HP Photosmart)?

Also, do many of you use soft proofing?

It's very useful for two things IMO - out of gamut, and to see if you're going to get a good print from the lab, versus what you are seeing on your screen.

We cover it pretty well in our SmugMug Help pages - enough to get started, anyhow. Got to get the ezprints.icc profile, linked on that page. Then, put it into your color profiles folder for Photoshop.

In Photoshop, I do two things, when I've done some dramatic color moves (doesn't matter how, could be LAB, or anything, really).. first check the Gamut warning:



The kart images that you linked (thanks Mercphoto!) show out of gamut warnings - you can see them in grey in the pic above.
and then I'll do a soft-proof, following the simple instructions on the help page linked above:



Actual soft proofing (click the preview on/off), will give you an idea - and will certainly tell you if you need to calibrate more, again, or even for the first time

Andy

jfriend wrote:

Are there any great tutorials out there on how to really use soft proofing in your normal daily workflow? And, while I generally know how to get a profile for commercial printers like EzPrints or WHCC, is there a way to get a profile for consumer printers (I have an HP Photosmart)?

I can make one, but I'd love it if another member would volunteer - we should have such a tute in our Dgrin Tutorials

I do believe that you can get icc profiles for any home printer. Check your mfgr's website.

Andy

One more thing, which I hope benefits all:

Repeat after me: MONITORS ARE NOT PRINTERS MONITORS ARE NOT PRINTERS MONITORS ARE NOT PRINTERS MONITORS ARE NOT PRINTERS MONITORS ARE NOT PRINTERS MONITORS ARE NOT PRINTERS MONITORS ARE NOT PRINTERS MONITORS ARE NOT PRINTERS

OK - why? Your monitor is brightly lit from behind. Prints reflect the light and color. Monitors make blacker blacks, and whiter whites, typically, than photo paper. Another reason to soft-proof, print samples with the Lab, and calibrate - simply or with calibration gear.

We also have a calibration print which you can get.

Andy

Here's what your soft-proof should look like:


Here's what it looks like, with the "simulate paper color" checked - INcorrect:


An animation, showing the what happens if you soft-proof incorrectly:

Large file - 2Mb

Andy

Soft Proofing Tute over at our Tutorials site...

Viking

Great stuff this soft-proofing!

Shall the Black box in the Mcbeth cart be Black as BLACK? Hmm, its that black here. And it mesure L 18. The picture looks great if I set the black and white point.

where do I find adobe gamma in osx?

dandill

Soft proofing to find the best paper and rendering intent
Initially I thought the route to producing an optimum print was to settle on a paper, get the best possible profile for it, and then adjust each image using soft proofing to best account for the limitations of the paper/profile/rendering intent.

Over time I have have discovered that for me this "one paper for all images" approach is too restrictive, because which paper can produce the "optimum" print is very image dependent, and, in particular, for some images with a given paper, no amount of adjustment of the image can result in a print that I would call optimum.

For this reason I currently use soft proofing differently, namely to determine the paper and rendering intent that does the best job for a given image. To use this approah one needs accurate profiles for a range of papers. In my case I use an Epson 4000 and the large library of high quality profiles freely provided for it by ColorByte Software as part of their ImagePrint Raster Image Processor software. But paper manufacturers typically provide profiles for their papers, and of course printer manufacturers also provide profiles for papers that they supply.

With a range of profiles installed, for a given image I cycle through the paper profiles, and for each one compare, by toggling Preview on and off,

Perceptual Rendering, without Black Point Coimpensation (since such compensation in incorporated automatically in Perceptual Rendering)

and

Relative Colorimetric Rendering, with Black Point Compnesation.

In this way I can usually zero in on a paper and intent that most faithfully renders a given image. For most images, most profiles and intents do not do a good job, but almost always one (or sometimes several) paper/intent combination do a great job.

Unfortunately, for the the range of images I print, no one paper works most of the time, but a set of three or four pspers covers things well.

Even if you do not print your own images, you can explore the variation of paper/intent combinations at no cost, just by downloading and installing profiles for different papers and then toggling through paper/intent combinations using soft proofing. The experience has been a real eye opener for me.

I hope this is helpful.

Viking

I did a software calibration. And I dont know what I think about the result, all my pictures looks sooooooo dark. But the Mcbeath color checker looks better, and darker. More contrast. the first picture is done After the calibration and the other before. Almost the some workflow.

Which one looks best ? for me the calibrated,of course..

Oakley

Hi Andy - So I've ordered the calibration print and am now following your soft-proofing tutorial --- but I'm stuck in Photoshop.

I have Photoshop Elements 4.0 and don't see the "Proof Setup" under the "View" menu. Is it only CS2 that has this option?

Am I s*** out of luck?

And dont' worry, I know I'm not --- cause I'm asking Mr. Problem Solver himslef. (c:

Thanks

Andy

Oakley wrote:

Am I s*** out of luck?

And dont' worry, I know I'm not --- cause I'm asking Mr. Problem Solver himslef. (c:

Thanks

Don't think if Elements can do that. But here are a few interesting links!

http://simplephotoshop.com/photoshop_elements/undocumented.htm

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10347

Oakley

Andy wrote:

Don't think if Elements can do that. But here are a few interesting links!

http://simplephotoshop.com/photoshop_elements/undocumented.htm

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10347

Thanks Andy, I'll check them out.

What do you know/think of Adobe Gamma and how it relates to "Monitor Calibration"

jfriend

No soft proof in Elements 3

Oakley wrote:

I have Photoshop Elements 4.0 and don't see the "Proof Setup" under the "View" menu. Is it only CS2 that has this option?

There was no soft proofing in Elements 3 (the last version I owned) so I assume it's not in Elements 4 either.

daroof

Andy wrote:

Don't think if Elements can do that. But here are a few interesting links!

http://simplephotoshop.com/photoshop_elements/undocumented.htm

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10347

I tried the first suggested link--looked good but is only for Windows and I'm on Mac OS X. Second link showed a few reviews on Photoshop Elements 4 that didn't sell me. Guess I'll wait to see what Elements 5 does in terms of soft proofing. May just stick with Elements 2!

Someone on a thread I read earlier this evening (sorry, they all blend after a while) suggested "Earthbound Light" software for curves and channel work, and I think she said it offers soft proofs too. If I look into that, I'll post.

BTW, this is my first post. Hence the smiley bowing to the master grinners. Follows Andy's prompt, he said you folks don't bite!

Andy

daroof wrote:

BTW, this is my first post. Hence the smiley bowing to the master grinners. Follows Andy's prompt, he said you folks don't bite!

welcome to Dgrin!

diamondmask

icc
I followed the directions for soft proofing, but my views menu has the "preview" box grayed out. I can't see the icc file.... any thoughts?

Oh, this is my first or second post here too. I'm new to smugmug....

john

Aaron Jors

I am trying to understand soft proofing and have a couple questions.

1. I have a photo where when I check the Gamut colors I get gray areas. Do I have the correct understanding that these gray areas will not print correctly and I have to make the gray go away?

2. Once you set up soft proofing and click OK the screen shows the soft proof changes. How do I get back to viewing the regular image without soft proof and the EZ prints profile?

arodney

jfriend wrote:

The go-cart images in this thread and the new-found ability to create (accidentally or on purpose) very vibrant colors in LAB mode caused me to really want to learn about out of gamut colors and how to understand when you have them in Photoshop and what you should do about them.

Lesson one, be careful about using Lab, a VERY oversold color model!

Are there any great tutorials out there on how to really use soft proofing in your normal daily workflow?

http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200409_rodneycm.pdf
http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200411_rodneycm.pdf

And you need to understand how to VIEW the prints you soft proof:

http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200604_rodneycm.pdf
http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200605_rodneycm.pdf

pathfinder

Aaron Jors wrote:

I am trying to understand soft proofing and have a couple questions.

1. I have a photo where when I check the Gamut colors I get gray areas. Do I have the correct understanding that these gray areas will not print correctly and I have to make the gray go away?

2. Once you set up soft proofing and click OK the screen shows the soft proof changes. How do I get back to viewing the regular image without soft proof and the EZ prints profile?

On a Mac, typing cmd+Y will toggle you between the soft proof image, and your previous working space image. Probably, the ctrl+Y will do the same on a PC.

I want to thank Andrew for those links concerning soft proofing. I intend to study them carefully, as soft proofing is a subject that is of growing interest to me lately also.

arodney

Soft proofing in action (video) is well described here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/camera-print.shtml

pathfinder

Andrew, I have that video - I am a big fan of Michael and Jeff's joint efforts. I need to review that again as well, and then I may have a couple questions.

Aaron Jors

Aaron Jors wrote:

I am trying to understand soft proofing and have a couple questions.

1. I have a photo where when I check the Gamut colors I get gray areas. Do I have the correct understanding that these gray areas will not print correctly and I have to make the gray go away?

2. Once you set up soft proofing and click OK the screen shows the soft proof changes. How do I get back to viewing the regular image without soft proof and the EZ prints profile?

Anyone in regards to the first question?

arodney

Aaron Jors wrote:

Anyone in regards to the first question?

Forget the gray overlay. Just use the Customize Proof setup, load your profile and select a rendering intent. The gray overlay, remove with sponge tool is pre Photoshop 5.0 legacy stuff that you can ignore.

jfriend

Aaron Jors wrote:

Anyone in regards to the first question?

1. I have a photo where when I check the Gamut colors I get gray areas. Do I have the correct understanding that these gray areas will not print correctly and I have to make the gray go away?

The "out of gamut" display represents colors that cannot be printed by your printer/paper combination. If you don't change these colors, they will be mapped (by the printing sub-system) to something that your printer can print as part of the printing process. Many times that mapping is a perfectly acceptable process that preserves much, if not all, of the visual "look" of your image.

If, on the other hand, you want to control how that mapping is done so it's done the way you like best, then you would want to change those colors yourself so that they fall in-gamut (and the gray goes away).

I hesitate to say that it's always worth the trouble for you to modify small gray areas to make them go away because the automatic mapping that happens as part of the printing process often does a pretty good job. How much better you can do than the automatic conversion depends a lot on the specific image and what you think looks best.

If I am printing a whole job of soccer shots of players in bright red uniforms that often exceed the gamut of the printer, I will generally not tweak every single image to bring the reds into gamut. If, on the other hand, I'm creating an enlargement of one or two images and I want them to look the best they can, I will tweak the reds to bring them into gamut so that I can control the way this happens and optimize the results.

I've actually run a test at EzPrints where I printed both an out of gamut red soccer uniform and one that I had manually tweak myself to be in gamut. If I look very closely, I can see slightly more detail in the strong reds in the one I manually tweaked, but if I show that image to other people without telling them what to look for, they don't see any difference. You could try this yourself with a test run for a very small printing charge if you really wanted to see the difference (or lack thereof). Again, it is image-specific so it's hard to make a gross generalization. Over time, you will develop a feel for the images that it is worth spending time manually tweaking.

m0pher

Beginner's Dilemma
I've recently become interested in learning more about digital processing and have used Canon's DPP software, with some great results. Then a friend pointed me to Adobe's Lightroom, which seems to have a much cleaner interface and some advanced functionality that I could come in handy with certain shots. The one feature it doesn't appear to have is the ability to create a soft proof; my friend said that I would need Photoshop for that.

Therein lies my dilemma. I'm a hobbyist, nothing more. While I can see myself spending $99 on the Lightroom license (I'm a part-time student so have access to educational pricing), I can't really justify the $299 cost for CS3 Extended on top of that for a single feature that I'll use only on occasion. Apparently, there is no educational version of the non-Extended version.

There's got to be a less expensive way that doesn't involve software piracy. Here's hoping that someone in this forum has a few ideas.

jfriend

m0pher wrote:

I've recently become interested in learning more about digital processing and have used Canon's DPP software, with some great results. Then a friend pointed me to Adobe's Lightroom, which seems to have a much cleaner interface and some advanced functionality that I could come in handy with certain shots. The one feature it doesn't appear to have is the ability to create a soft proof; my friend said that I would need Photoshop for that.

Therein lies my dilemma. I'm a hobbyist, nothing more. While I can see myself spending $99 on the Lightroom license (I'm a part-time student so have access to educational pricing), I can't really justify the $299 cost for CS3 Extended on top of that for a single feature that I'll use only on occasion. Apparently, there is no educational version of the non-Extended version.

There's got to be a less expensive way that doesn't involve software piracy. Here's hoping that someone in this forum has a few ideas.

Since Soft Proofing is one of the significant missing things for a pro photo workflow, it's my educated guess that it will get added to a future version of Lightroom. I have no insider knowledge here, just trying to do some educated guessing.

Furthermore, Lightroom has now been out for about a year so, if they follow the patterns of any of their other products in this space, we should expect a 2.0 release in the next 12 months.

All of this is the long way of saying that maybe you should get Lightroom, get up to speed with it and perhaps they will add soft proofing by the time you're reading to really start learning how to take advantage of it. If they don't added it in the next rev, you can decide if you really need it and save up for the educational price on CS3. There are a few other apps that can do some soft proofing (like QImage), but I'm not aware of any that are good substitutes for Photoshop in this regard and that integrate well with Lightroom.

While much is made of soft proofing, I really only find it useful for helping me understand where my image has colors that exceed the capabilities of my printer and where the automatic color space mapping that Photoshop does won't do as good a job as I can. In the end, I've found that s very few of my images are actually better because I soft proofed them and then manually adjusted them to control how the colors were brought into gamut. I'm not saying that there aren't some cases, but in what I shoot, it's not very many.

I personally wouldn't use soft proofing as a major consideration in which photo editing/management package you choose.

dandill

jfriend wrote:

I personally wouldn't use soft proofing as a major consideration in which photo editing/management package you choose.

In support of this advice, I read at

http://www.westcoastimaging.com/wci/page/info/photoshoptip/tip35.html

that the very best soft proof is a hard proof. That is, the best procedure is to tune things using printed proofs.

arodney

dandill wrote:

In support of this advice, I read at

http://www.westcoastimaging.com/wci/page/info/photoshoptip/tip35.html

that that the very best soft proof is a hard proof. That is, the best procedure is to tune things using printed proofs.

Especially when your main goal is to sell output!

Soft proofing isn't prefect. Its not designed to eliminate hard proofing. Its designed to minimize the back and forth fixing until you get what you want process which is time consuming and expensive.

m0pher

jfriend wrote:

While much is made of soft proofing, I really only find it useful for helping me understand where my image has colors that exceed the capabilities of my printer and where the automatic color space mapping that Photoshop does won't do as good a job as I can. In the end, I've found that s very few of my images are actually better because I soft proofed them and then manually adjusted them to control how the colors were brought into gamut. I'm not saying that there aren't some cases, but in what I shoot, it's not very many.

I personally wouldn't use soft proofing as a major consideration in which photo editing/management package you choose.

In principle, I agree. I don't have a printer of my own--I print almost next to nothing--so soft proofing is a valuable feature prior to ordering prints online on the rare occasion that I have a need to do so.

Did some further digging and found that The Gimp 2.4 supports soft proofing without too much additional trouble. Given that I'm a hobbyist and therefore not making any money off of this, DPP + GIMP is a cost-effective (read: free) solution for which Lightroom 2.0 may be a great upgrade path, depending on what features make it into the 2.0 release.

Barry Nichols

I use a iMac and have a Pantone Huey-Pro monitor calibrater. In CS3, when I go to View-Proof Set Up, I see that I am working in CMYK. I choose custom and soft proof and can see the differences by toggling preview. I guess I am wondering what next? Should I choose OK and be working in the EZPrint icc profile to adjust my images so I am looking at what will hopefully be printed?

arodney

Barry Nichols wrote:

In CS3, when I go to View-Proof Set Up, I see that I am working in CMYK. I choose custom and soft proof and can see the differences by toggling preview. I guess I am wondering what next? Should I choose OK and be working in the EZPrint icc profile to adjust my images so I am looking at what will hopefully be printed?

You should select the output profile that will be used for the print job. Pick a rendering intent (this is image specific). You'll likely prefer either Relative Colorimetric or Perceptual. You can save one of each as a custom preset that you can then select directly from the View menu.

http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200409_rodneycm.pdf
http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200411_rodneycm.pdf

Assuming the lab uses the profile and rendering intent you select (big if here) and assuming your display is properly calibrated for the viewing conditions you'll view the print, you should get a pretty good visual match.