Soft Proofing?

Tom K.Tom K. Registered Users Posts: 817 Major grins
edited March 3, 2006 in Digital Darkroom
I have just been reading the info at this link: http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Frontier/using_printer_profiles.htm
and have tried "soft-proofing" my photos for the first time before send them out to the printer. I am using WHCC and have used Mpix. I have downloaded ICC profiles from both WHCC and Mpix and when applying the soft-proof technique explained in the above link.....the image looks much worse than what I previously edited in Photoshop CS2. In Photoshop I go to
view > proof setup > custom....and then choose the WHCC profile for example and choose relative colormetric and check black point compensation and simulate paper color and simulate black ink. Then the image looks much less contrasty and downright disappointing. The link above says edit the image until it looks like it did prior to soft-proofing but it's not easy to get it looking as good. In fact I find it close to impossible.

I have not used soft-proofing before but have read that it is a must for accurate results when printing. I use WHCC primarily and print nothing at home. Can anyone offer advice or suggestions on what I should be doing to get the best results from a lab such as WHCC and the effectiveness off soft-proofing. All advice and council would be most appreciated.

Thank you.
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Comments

  • colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited March 3, 2006
    Tom K. wrote:
    ...when applying the soft-proof technique explained in the above link.....the image looks much worse than what I previously edited in Photoshop CS2. In Photoshop I go to view > proof setup > custom....and then choose the WHCC profile for example and choose relative colormetric and check black point compensation and simulate paper color and simulate black ink. Then the image looks much less contrasty and downright disappointing. The link above says edit the image until it looks like it did prior to soft-proofing but it's not easy to get it looking as good. In fact I find it close to impossible.

    It's surprising the site says that. When soft-proofing just about any printer, it's going to be impossible to make it look like the monitor. The soft proof might end up looking just like the print, but the monitor (non-soft-proofed) image will always look better because the monitor is capable of reproducing what the printer isn't. The goal is to make it look as good as it can using a simulation of a specific printer as a guide. Which means you only want to do that using adjustment layers or a copy of the image. Once you've corrected an image based on a soft proof, you've corrected it for a specific device, and it might not be correctable for other devices at that point, so only use a soft-proof corrected version as a derivative version, not a master.

    See if this article helps. It helped me. The article explains how and why the soft-proofed image looks worse, and why worse does not mean wrong.

    Soft-proofing is great. If I try out different paper profiles, I can easily see on screen which papers are going to reproduce better or worse before using even one drop of expensive ink.
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited March 3, 2006
    Here's how we do it for SmugMug / EZPrints

    http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1123524
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