[LR 5] Soft Proofing - Monitor Gamut Warning vary with printer profile ?!?!

Hi,
There's something I can't understand when using the soft proofing feature in LR.
The Monitor Gamut Warning feature (top left icon in the histogram when soft proofing is enabled) is supposed to show us what colors in the current image cannot be reproduced on the display. Right ? If I understand well, the warning computation is made by comparing the current image (virtualized by LR in the Melissa RGB color space) to the gamut of the display (read from the active calibration profile).
So why does LR show different "out of gamut" areas for the display when I change the printer profile selected when using soft proofing? This doesn't make sense to me.
Did I miss something?
Thanks in advance.

indeed they are vague about this. My thought about this comes from conversing with Adobe folks here and elsewhere as I am pretty sure I'vce discussed this on the forum before. As far as I know the monitor warning is supposed to be calculated after the conversion to the printer profile so that you get an idea whether the soft proofed color is accurately displayed. That shoud be the correct behavior as proofing can actually take a color either in or out of the monitor gamut. I am not 100% sure on this though but it certainly explains how it behaves.
Also if you calibrate your display and write out a icc v4 display profile, the situation changes again as now the display profile can actually contain a perceptual rendering intent, making it even less precise and the assumption of simple one-to-one linear conversions between color spaces is invalid. Few calibration software packages do this though but there are a few exceptions.
If you only want to know whether your image is outside of the display profile, you can indeed trick the soft proof to allow you to select a display profile as the printer proofing profile. You can in principle select a standard working space such as prophotoRGB there and get results that make sense. But you definitely do not want to have a random printer profile selected for the reasons cited above. I guess they could add some smartness to detect that you selected the profile of the current display and not a profile of another random display and then collapse the interface but that is such an edge case that I doubt Adobe would prioritize this. It works fine if you simply realize that you selected your monitor profile as the printer proof profile.

Similar Messages

Display profiles and soft proofing Windows RGB / Monitor RGB

This might have asked before, but I did not find any definite answer for this. Sorry this gets a bit long.
Short question:
What's the difference between softproofing with Windows RGB and Monitor RGB targets? I see differences in my image between these targets.
Long question(s):
Here's some reasoning.. let me know when I go wrong.
I have hardware calibrated my display Spyder 3 elite to sRGB standard. I have understood that the generated display profile contains a LUT table that affects gamma values for each RGB component, so that affects both gamma and color temperature. That table is loaded into video card when Windows starts. In addition to the LUT table, the display profile contains what? Probably information on what color space the display has been calibrated to. Does that matches directly with the LUT table information, but may deviate from sRGB in the case my monitor cannot reproduce sRGB 100%?
Now if I have image that that is in sRGB, but the embedded sRGB profile has been stripped away, should any non color management aware image viewer show the colors properly, if it is assumed that 1) my monitor can handle full sRGB space and 2) my monitor was succesfully calibrated to sRGB and the LUT table has been loaded into video card?
Or does it still require a color management aware program to show the image, which implies that the LUT table information alone is not enough and the display profile contains some extra information that is needed to show the image correctly? I would think this is true, as I needed to turn on color management in Canon Zoom Browser to see images in it the same way as in Photoshop.
Now to the original question, what's the difference in Photoshop when soft proofing with Windows RGB and Monitor RGB targets
I read from www.gballard.net that
Photoshop can effectively "SoftProof" our web browser color:
Photoshop: View> Proof SetUp> Windows RGB
Photoshop's Soft Proof screen preview here simulates how unmanaged applications, web browsers, will display the file on 2.2 gamma monitors, based on the sRGB profile. If the file is based on sRGB and our monitor gamma is 2.2 and D/65 6500 degrees Kelvin, we should see very little shift here, which is the goal.
Photoshop: View> Proof SetUp> Monitor RGB
THIS IS WHERE the color-brightness-saturation problem will repeat consistantly.
Soft Proofing Monitor RGB here strips-ignores the embedded ICC profile and Assigns-Assumes-Applies the Monitor profile or color space.
The color and density changes seen here show the difference between the monitor profile and the source profile sRGB.
I'm not sure how to read that. Assume here that my monitor has been calibrated to sRGB and the PS working space sRGB. Do in both cases photoshop strip away color profile from the image at first? What happens after that? Does in Windows RGB case Photoshop pass the color values as they are to display? What does it do in "Monitor RGB" case then? Does it assign my monitor profile to the image? If it does, does there also happen conversion from one color space to another? In either one conversion there must happen as the soft proofing results are different. Does either one cause "double profiling" to the image as the monitor is already calibrated?
Thanks

Windows defaults to sRGB if you don't calibrate your monitor so untagged sRGB files should display (more or less) correctly in applications that don't know about color management on systems with uncalibrated monitors.
When proofing against Windows RGB you're proofing against sRGB, it will show you how applications that don't know about color management on an uncalibrated monitor will show the image. This is what you proof against if you want to see how the image will display in web browsers.
When you proof against Monitor RGB, Photoshop will assign your monitor's icc profile to the image which tends to be utterly useless most of the time.

Is It Possible to Save a Soft-Proofed File?

Let's assume that I have an image, foo.psd, open in PSCS4. I softproof the image for a particular paper and printer. When I hit Ctrl-Y, the image is shown in softproof mode, and the softproofing info is appended to the image name in the PSCS4 window. Is there any way to save a copy of foo.psd with the soft proofing applied, i.e. foo-softproof.psd?
Reed

Reed,
a print looks often different to the monitor. Quite normal
- many monitor colors cannot be printed.
They are out-of gamut for the printing CMYK space.
The RGB image data are converted via the RGB profile
to Lab, which is large enough to represent real world
photos without loss.
From Lab the data are converted to CMYK via the CMYK
profile. Here is loss because of the smaller gamut.
The colors have to be mapped from the larger RGB gamut
into the smaller CMYK gamut. This can be done
a) automatically by Rendering Intent Relative Colorimetric:
in-gamut colors are not changed. Out-of-gamut colors
are mapped to the gamut boundary; this process isn't
accurately defined by standards.
b) automatically by Rendering Intent Perceptual:
all colors - even those which were in-gamut - are
shifted towards the gray axis. This process depends
very much on the scientist or programmer and is nowhere
defined by standards.
So far one doesn't need human interaction, but the results
are not always pleasing. The third and optimal method is
c) image based gamut compression. Reduce the saturation
and eventually rotate the hue in regions which are out-
of-gamut until Photoshop's Proof Color Gamut Warning
doesn't show larger out-of-gamut areas.
Gamut compression algorithms and the color science behind
are explained in this excellent book:
Jan Morovic (accents omitted)
Color Gamut Mapping
John Wiley & Sons, 2008
Manual image based gamut compression is demonstrated here
by many examples (but it's called 'Editing in Lab'):
http://www.fho-emden.de/~hoffmann/labproof15092008.pdf
Attention: 3.4 MBytes.
Chapter 9 shows visualized gamut boundaries for several
color spaces.
IMO you're seeking the impossible (if I'm understanding
you correctly).
Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

Colors in print preview not matching colors in soft proofing

Hi There,
Just wanted to print a new photo and realized that the colors in print preview do not match the colors in soft proofing. In both cases I selected the same icc profile and rendering method. The print colors matched the colors in print preview. I never had a problem so far. All new prints will be checked with soft proofing and adjusted when necessary. I never paid attention to the color rendition in print preview and all prints perfectly matched the colors from the soft proofing. I was surprised when my print came out of the printer and the colors weren't matching the soft proofing colors, but that of the print preview.
I don't understand why Photoshop renders the colors differently in the first place. Please see attached screenshot for the difference in the blue/cyan colors.
I would appreciate if anybody could point me in the right direction in what is causing this difference. I don't care if the print view colors will match the print, but I do care when soft proofing is not working.
Thank you.
Best regards,
D.

Here are some addtional details:
PS 13.1.2
Mac OS X 10.8.4
12 GB Ram
60 GB free disk space
I printed the same photo from two other computers (MacBook and iMac) with different PS versions (CS4 and CS5). The prints turned out identical to the first one which matches the print preview color rendition on my main computer (MacPro) running CS6. Strangely the colors in print preview of CS5 on the iMac renders the colors identical to the soft proofing colors.

LR 4.2 - how to compare master and soft proof copy?

Hello Everyone,
I'd like to use the soft proofing function in LR 4.2 to preview the print output and I'd like to use it to apply some corrections to the pictures before printing them, in order they look like I originally meant them to look like, but I'm experiencing some troubles, possibly caused by the used workflow (I'm not a pro, but my environment is calibrated properly).
My workflow is:
1. I import all fotos and apply some changes so that the fotos look like I want them to be (this is the master)
2. As I want to print them I use the soft proofing function and load the target icc profile with which I create a soft proof copy. Sometimes I notice that the differences between master and soft proof copy are quite drammatic, especially with regards to contrast, vibrance of colors and sometimes also regarding the brightness.
3. My target is now to adapt the soft proof copy so that it looks like the master (as I wanted the foto to look like), but I can't find any proper way to do so, because:
- I can't find a (semi-)automated way to adapt the soft proof copy so that it "looks" like the master copy
- in the Develop module I can't find a way to display both the master foto and the soft proof copy besides each other to compare them, in order to apply changes to the soft proof copy only so that it "looks" like the master.
The only way I found so far is to switch back and forth bewteen master and soft proof copy to compare them (to be able to apply the needed changes to the soft proof copy), but this is pretty painful, as the fotos don't load immediately, but it always takes some seconds and I have to 'remember' how the master looks like.
I'm not sure whether I'm doing something terribly wrong, but unfotunately I didn't find any answers to this specific issue so far, that's why I'm writing here.
Hope you can point me to a solution,
Regards,
Plasma2k

Activate softproofing with your choice of output profile (this can include proofing a web output colourspace such as sRGB).
Press Y to show a split before/after view (if your Toolbar is not open, press T to open that - this gives different kinds of split view options).
You will now see a comparison of the un-proofed and proofed appearances of this current image.
If you then make any develop adjustment from this mode, e.g. to make these two appearances more similar, you are then prompted to create a new proofing (virtual) copy as necessary - which can store these corrective adjustments independently of the main adjustments.
The before/after view then switches to show a comparison between your starting image (shown without softproofing) against your print-adjusted proof version (shown with softproofing).

Soft proofing problem with wide-gamut monitor

Hi,
I've just upgraded to a wide-gamut monitor (Dell U2713H).
I set the colour-space to adobe RGB when using Lightroom (I'm on LR5).
When I select soft proofing , my picture goes grey (that is, where I was displaying the photo in the border, then changes to a uniform grey within the proofing border). If I click on 'create proof copy' the picture then displays.
When the picture is grey and I move my mouse over the image, I can see the RGB% values change, as if there is an image there.
Previously, I had a (rather) low-end viewsonic and had no problems - Soft-Proofing worked fine. All I did was install the new monitor.
I'm running windows 7, nvidia 8800GT card, 8gb memory. No system changes prior/after changing the monitor.
Everything else on the monitor works fine (better than fine, actually, it is a great monitor)
Soft-proofing in photoshop (CS6) works fine, for what that is worth.
I'm a bit stumped. Can anyone help?
hans

1234ewqrd wrote:
I set the colour-space to adobe RGB when using Lightroom (I'm on LR5).
What do you mean by this? Are you selecting Adobe RGB as color profile for you rmonitor? Or are you talking about selecting Adobe RGB as softproofing color space in Lr?
The fact that your images are grey in Lr is a strong indication that your new monitor is not calibrated and is way off the chart. It might be brand new but that does not mean that its tonality and color display is correct for photo editing in Lr.
Calibration is done with a piece of hardware called a spectrometer and the accompanying software. Brand names are Spyder, ColorMunki, GretaghMacbeth. After calibration the software creates a profile that is used by the monitor.
You don't select any other profile than the profile created by calibration and profiling for photo editing - irrespective of which program you use for photo editing.
In the meantime - as a temporary remedy and until you get the calibration tools - you can set your monitor to sRGB. Be aware that sRGB is a much smaller color space than what you rmonitor is able to display; with sRGB you basically prevent the monitor from displaing wide gamut.
See here on how to set the monitor to sRGB:
http://members.lightroomqueen.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/1137/188/how-do-i- change-my-monitor-profile-to-check-whether-its-corrupted
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4977176#4977176
Everything else on the monitor works fine (better than fine, actually, it is a great monitor)
You have no way of telling if the monitor works fine, i.e. if the monitor has the correct intensity (brightness) and if it displays the colors correctly, i.e. as a true representation of the color numbers. Our brain automatically adjusts colors to what they ought to be. What we see is basically unreliable for photo editing. Only a calibrated monitor will display the colors correctly.
Also, when you calibrate select an intensity (brightness) of araound 110 cd/m2 - irrespective of what the software suggests. Often monitors are way to bright which results in prints that are too dark.

Soft proofing and Out of Gamut warning

I like to use Blurb for a perfect photo book. I am an amateur photographer but like the most of my pictures on paper.
What's the perfect workflow for soft proofing ?
A friend of me has calibrated my screen (Thunderbolt Apple screen).
My current methode :
I take a picture in RAW with AdobeRGB profile setting, i adjust a few parameters in Lightroom and then go to Photoshop and start de soft proofing with the Blurb-ICC profile.
The result with soft proofing is like there's a white mist over the picture. Then i try to optimize this with various parameters.
When i try the soft proofing with the Blurb ICC profile + out of Gamut warning option .... there are many colors out of gamut .
My second methode :
When i import the raw picture in photoshop cc and i convert the picture to the Blurb profile, then there are no out of gamut colors but everything is in CMYK.
Is this a good way for perfect photo books in Blurb ?
Or must i ignore the out of gamut colors ?
Is it better to make my pictures in sRGB ?
When i want to save the end result in Photoshop cc ( jpeg for Blurb ) must i enclose the Blurb ICC (when in CMYK) , Adobe RGB or sRGB profile (when in RGB) ?
Please help me make a perfect photobook
Mario

Since I don't know what "Blurb" is, I'm going to assume that's your printing service somewhere, and that they have provided you with their target printer profile.
What you describe under current method is absolutely normal, expected behavior. Adobe RGB simply is a much larger color space than whatever this Blurb profile is.
If you care to let me know how or where I can get a hold of this Blurb profile, I can in a matter of seconds prepare an illustration of how the two profiles compare to each other. From where I sit, it would appear you're throwing away a lot of image quality by using Blurb.
There are two wacky ways of getting around your seeing the out of gamut warnings. The first is not to soft-proof at all. (Duh! ) The other one is an unorthodox workflow which works just fine PROVIDED you are aware that the image files as an end product are only good for Blurb and for no other purpose, and that is to set your WORKING COLOR SPACE from the get go to the Blurb profile. Of course that is not the recommended or even kosher workflow. It is only a workaround to the deficiencies of this Blurb profile.
I cannot comment on your "second method" until I know more about this Blurb phenomenon. If they print on a CMYK press, then they are throwing away a lot of colors, even if you send them images in sRGB. Nothing you can do about that.
The one thing I can say is that if the outfit doing the printing is the one that sent you the profile, then they will know how to deal with an sRGB file. The profile they sent you is just what their printing process uses. No need to attach a copy of their own profile.

Printing, Soft Proofing & Color Management in LR 1.2: Two Questions

Printing, Soft Proofing, and Color Management in LR 1.2: Two Questions
There are 2 common ways to set color management in Adobe CS2:
1. use managed by printer setting or,
2. use managed by Adobe CS2 program.
I want to ask how Color Management for Adobe LR 1.2 differs from that in CS2?
As is well known, Color Management by printer requires accurate printer profiles including specific model printer, types of ink and specific paper. It is clear that this seems to work well for LR 1.2 when using the Printer module.
Now lets consider what happens one tries to use Color Management by Adobe LR 1.2. Again, as is well known, Color Management by printer must be turned off so that only one Color Management system is used. It has been my experience that LR 1.2 cant Color Manage my images correctly. Perhaps someone with more experience can state whether this is true or what I might be doing to invalidate LR 1.2 Color Management.
Specifically, I cant use Soft Proofing to see how my images are changed on my monitor when I try to use the edit functions in LR 1.2. Martin Evening states in his text, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book that it is not possible to display the results of the rendered choices (Perceptual or Relative) on the display monitor. While it is not clear in Evenings text if this applies to LR 1.2, my experience would suggest that it still applies to the 1.2 update even though the publication date of his book preceded this update.
Can someone with specific knowledge of Adobe LR 1.2 confirm that Color Management and Soft Proofing with LR 1.2 hasnt been implemented at the present.
The writer is a retired physicist with experience in laser physics and quantum optics.
Thanks,
Hersch Pilloff

Hersch,
since just like me, you're a physicist (I am just a little further from retirement ;) ) I'll explain a little further. computer screens (whether they are CRT or LCD) are based on emission (or transmission) of three colors of light in specific (but different for every screen) shades of red, green, and blue. This light stimulates the receptors in your eye which are sensitive to certain but different bands of red, green and blue as the display emits, making your brain think it sees a certain color instead of a mix of red green and blue. Printers however, produce color by modifying the reflection of the paper by absorbing light. Their color mixing operates completely differently than displays. When you throw all colors of ink on the paper, you get black (the mixing is said to be subtractive) instead of white as you get in displays (the mixing there is additive). The consequence of this is that in the absence of an infinite number of inks you cannot produce all the colors you can display on a monitor using a printer and vice versa. This can be easily seen if you compare a display's profile to a printer profile in a program such as Colorsync utility (on every mac) or
Gamut vision. Typically printers cannot reproduce a very large region in the blue but most displays on the other hand cannot make saturated yellows and cyans.
Here is a flattened XY diagram of a few color spaces and a typical printer profile to illustrate this. Most displays are close to sRGB, but some expensive ones are close to adobeRGB, making the possible difference between print and screen even worse.
So, when the conversion to the printer's profile is made from your source file (which in Lightroom is in a variant of prophotoRGB), for a lot of colors, the color management routine in the computer software has to make an approximation (the choice of perceptual and relative colorimetric determine what sort of approximation is made). Soft proofing allows you to see the result of this approximation and to correct specific problems with it.

Strange sRGB soft-proofing behavior

I am wondering if the CMS gurus might have an idea about this:
I am using Photoshop CC, but had a similar experience with the previous version and on a different machine.
I have a wide gamut NEC monitor which has been profiled using i1 Display. The generated profile is selected in Windows as default profile. Everything seems OK with this side of things.
So I have a bitmap file with sRGB embedded profile, and my working space is sRGB. Colour appears correct in 'normal' editing view, i.e. PS is already adjusting what it is sending to the monitor based on the fact that it is an sRGB image. To confirm, I can look at the same graphic in Firefox with CMS switched on, and it looks the same as in Photoshop. And it looks "correct". Furthermore, if I soft-proof to "Monitor", what I see makes sense too. (Overly vibrant colours). And that's also visually consistent with looking at it in Firefox with CMS switched off.
So far so good. The fun begins when I ask PS to softproof the image to sRGB. Now, you might ask what would be the point of that, since in theory I'm already looking at it being rendered into sRGB colour space. Regardless, what I expect to happen is that soft-proofing to sRGB makes absolutely no difference to what I see. However this is not the case! The on-screen representation changes markedly... not only is it overly saturated but there is a colour shift as well! To make matters more confusing, when I use the Info box to show the raw and the softproof colour values, they are identical, as they should be. So the numbers seem OK, but the on-screen rendering is clearly wrong.
I also see a similar effect if I do a "convert to profile sRGB" with preview switched on. Up until I hit the OK button, the preview rendering is "wrong". Once the conversion completes (which did nothing because it was already in sRGB space) it renders as it did before.
I'm wondering if this is some kind of weird bug that happens when you softproof to the space you're already in?
MT

tozzy wrote:
it's very confusing behavior and leads you to wonder if there are other times when the on-screen CMS rendering behavior can't be trusted.
In my observation there are two forms of color-management implementation, both controlled by Adobe: The first is the traditional Adobe Color Engine as executed by the CPU - this is run if you have the [ ] Enable Graphics Processor setting unchecked or have it checked but are using Basic drawing mode in the Advanced Settings section. Phtotoshop also reverts to this CPU-resident color-management while you are moving a window and when you're using View - Gamut Warning.
The second form is executed by the GPU and is used when in Normal and Advanced drawing modes. This GPU implementation is presumably faster, but is also observably inaccurate under certain specific conditions. For example, if your document is in the ProPhoto RGB color space, it will show subtle color banding in a pure gray gradient.
The GPU-resident color management transforms have also been seen to add multi-value output level jumps, resulting in visible banding, in high bit depth gray gradients, where the CPU-resident code does not.
I reported these inaccuracies to Adobe some time ago, but either the GPU-resident color-management code is inscrutable or they just have other priorities, because the inaccuracies remain.
I just brought all this up, tozzy, since you mention the problem going away when the CPU-resident color-management code is invoked. To retain GPU acceleration for other things, but use CPU color-management, try using Basic drawing mode if you're concerned about getting the most accurate displays from color-management. Remember that you have to close and restart Photoshop after making changes in these settings.
-Noel

Soft proofing to sRGB not working as expected

I've gone through three customer reps via chat on this, and none of them had a clue.
I recently discovered the soft proofing capability in Lightroom 4, and watched an Adobe video about it. Looked pretty cool. I experimented with soft-proofing for printing to an Epson Artisan printer. I'd always struggled a little bit with prints being too dark, etc., but now I was able to produce the best prints I've ever had.
But then I started to experiment with soft proofing for sRGB. My photo club takes photo submissions as sRGB, and they then show them on a monitor during meetings. Sometimes they don't look so good. So, I figured soft-proofing them first would help correct that.
So, I've got a photo that has a lot of red in it (a flower). The soft proofing indicated pretty much all of the reds were out of gamut. I tried reducing the saturation, but they had to go pretty much completely desaturated (black and white) before Lightroom said they were in gamut. I also experimented with change the hue, but still no luck.
I then deleted the soft proof virtual copy, and just exported the original as sRGB. Looked fine.
This would seem to make the soft proofing to sRGB to be somewhat useless for me (at least for reds - seemed okay for the small number of other photos I experimented with that didn't have that much red).
Just wondering if anyone else has had issues with this, or if I'm doing anything incorrectly, etc.
Thanks!
P.S. Update... Last chat rep had me try something that seemed to work better. My photos are stored in Lightroom as JPGs with a color space of RGB and a color profile of ProPhoto RGB. If I export that photo to JPG / sRGB, then re-import it into Lightroom, and then do the soft proofing again, it works much better. The downside of this that the two-step process makes it a bit unusable for me.

> if I'm doing anything incorrectly,
You should not really try to do the bringing of the colors into gamut too much. I know the videos you see online show this but it is really counterproductive in many cases. You'll often completely desaturate or get really disagreeable hue shifts if you trust the out of gamut warnings as you have noticed. What you should do is turn on the softproof and check whether your image looks good and the colors don't shift too much. If they do or you lose essential detail, try to correct it using the HSL tools or local desaturation. The out of gamut warning is more useful when you are proofing to a printer profile and you might have colors that your display cannot show but your printer can print. For sRGB, not so much in my experience.
> Last chat rep had me try something that seemed to work better. My photos are stored in Lightroom as JPGs with a color space of RGB and a color profile of ProPhoto RGB. If I export that photo to JPG / sRGB, then re-import it into Lightroom, and then do the soft proofing again, it works much better
That's a silly answer that rep gave you. What happens when you export to sRGB is that all your colors will get truncated hard(it uses a relative coloremtric conversion) to the sRGB profile, so if there was detail there that you wish to preserve you just lost it and you won't be able to get it back. Of course if you then soft proof the sRGB jpeg to sRGB, you will have an easy time conforming it to sRGB, since it already is! The out of gamut warning it might show you on sRGB jpegs without any correction is not correct - a known bug or strangeness with how Lightroom handles these and just tiny touches on the sliders will make them disappear. It is fooling you and in fact you were better off not even trying to soft proof and simply exporting to sRGB and ignoring soft proofing.
P.S. the monitor problems you have noticed in your photo club are probably more an issue of the monitor not being calibrated and probably not using a color managed application to show the images. If your monitor is calibrated and that one is too and using a color managed app to show the images should give you very good correspondance in color between your monitor and that one regardless of what color space you choose for the images. That might perhaps be a good thing for the club. You really need to be calibrating monitors and use only color managed apps for display.

Soft proofing - implementation suggestions

Reading this thread it seems the Lightroom team is seriously considering or actually implementing soft proofing for LR3.0. Since it's not in the current beta, the users cannot give feedback on the implementation. Instead, let's use this thread to give suggestions on how soft proofing should work.
Here are my suggestions:
availability: soft proofing should be available in all modules: you need it for print and web output, but the necessary corrections are made in the develop and library modules.
UI placement: the film strip seems to be a logical place for a tool that can be used from within all modules.
features: soft proofing would need an on/off toggle, a clipping indicator toggle and a list menu to select/create soft proofing profiles (with a choice of relative/perceptual; black point would be nice but doesn't fit the 'lightroom way').
monitor proofing: make it easy for users to select the profile corresponding to their monitor. That way they get a warning that their monitor may be 'cheating' them (especially on laptops).
further: the tool could show a warning if it is switched on with the 'wrong' profile for the active module. For example, for web you should only use sRGB, for print the same as selected for the printer and for the slideshow perhaps only the monitor profile.
Anyone else?
Simon

Jeff Schewe wrote:
I disagree for several reason: 1) the Develop module is the ONLY color accurate viewing environment, 2) Develop already has a before/after built in that can be adapted to the task of showing a before and an after with the after representing the output space. 3) the Develop module allows the creation and or selection of Develop templates as well as snapshots. Snapshots might make an excellent vehicle for carrying image adjustments.
I am not sure what you mean by the develop module being the only color accurate viewing environment. I just checked it by setting my monitor gamma to 1.0, and all modules applied the necessary adjustments to the images. The only difference I could find is that the other modules use heavily compressed JPGs, leading to the occasional artifact when viewing at 1:1.
I really believe that soft proofing itself is fundamentally an analysis tool that should be accessible from all modules, and not necessarily be linked to image adjustment tools. If someone wants to work on a set of images for a particular output process, he/she should be able to make all necessary changes with soft proofing turned on, and have the effects visible in all modules. Of course, in practice many users will want to target different output media for the same image, and such tools are important, but need not be a show-stopper for soft-proofing to appear.
On your number (2), I personally don't find before/after view essential, or even that useful, when making adjustments for printing. When you want to compress an image into the gamut of a printer, I tend to make small adjustments in the context of that particular image, not with a reference to some master image. The exception to this case would be if you really have something which you would call the 'master' (say, some really famous image), and you want the output to be as close as possible on more restricted printing process. In any case, I wouldn't consider a before/after view as essential. And when it's needed, it could be implemented by an on/off toggle as well, IMO.
I find snapshots quite cumbersome, and especially for the purpose of keeping track of such 'output versions'. The problem is that they exist inside the develop module, they are 'all or nothing', and there is no easy way to transfer partial settings between snapshots. For example, suppose I have three 'output versions' of an image, and I decide to change some of the underlying settings (say, the white balance). Then I don't have an easy way to synchronize these changes between the output versions. Another issue is that there is no easy way to recall snapshots from outside the develop module. If I want to print a couple of images for which I have the necessary adjustments at some other time, I have to go in and select the appropriate snapshot for each of them. In the context of these 'output versions', this is something that should be possible from the library module, where you select the versions you have worked on before.
Also note that while Develop might be the place for adjusting the image for the output, the creation of an output adjustment might be best called up in Print (or Export). So you might create a saved preset that contains the output device, the specific profile, the rendering intent and whatever output based adjustments the image (or images) may need. That could be done directly in the Print module...
The three main factors that soft proofed adjustments require is a change in the tone curve required by differences in dynamic range or outputs, hue and saturation adjustments to counter or alter the way a profile may render a certain (or several) colors and a local area contrast adjustment in the form of Clarity. Ideally, the soft proofing tools should contain a soft proofed histogram, color samples in the output space and tone/color adjustments suited for correcting for the output condition.
Ok, I can see a benefit to a separate output adjustment tool that is specifically aimed for the type of adjustments you'd make when soft-proofing. The settings for this tool could be linked to the output device and profile, so that they would switch automatically according to the profile that is selected. When soft-proofing is turned on in the library module, there could be an icon in the images for which a particular output transformation is defined. And because soft-proofing would be fully functional in the develop module, you could inspect which other images need further adjustments.
I don't think it's very useful to have a 'preset' for this tool for a particular output profile and rendering intent, independent of the image. That's the job of the profile itself. However, it should be possible to easily copy-paste such settings between images. For example, if I have shots a number of images in bright green grass, I will probably need similar adjustments for all of them. Also, settings should be copyable to serve as a starting point for use with a different profile.
The 'output adjustment tool' itself should IMO contain two things:
1) Photoshop-like hue/sat control (with selectable color ranges) [most important]
2) Manual tone curve adjustments.
I wouldn't mind if the tool is only accessible from within the develop module, as long as you can see the soft-proof from all modules. The soft-proofing functionality (separate from this tool) should also take care of adjusting the histogram in the library and develop modules.
Summarinzing, I see room for two separate tool sets that do not necessarily need to be implemented at the same time. The first is an overarching soft-proofing solution that makes the effects of the output transformation visible throughout the workflow. The second is a separate output adjustment tool in the develop module, that is able to link it's settings to the currently selected output device/profile.
Simon

Soft proofing for online printing - CS5

After using PSE since V1 and LR since it was beta I've added CS5 and I'm a bit overwhelmed. Right now I'm trying to set up CS5 to soft proof for online printing. I read a bunch of online tutorials including Dry Creek Photo's, then downloaded and installed the ICC files for my local Costco. When I select one of the Costco printers under View - Proof Setup - Custom - Device to Simulate, I get an error message: "Could not complete your request because the ICC profile is invalid." I've repeated this with profiles from other Costcos - including one across the country from me - and from Adorama. No joy. I'm running CS5 V12.1 x64; it's the same story in 32 bit. OS is Vista 64 Home Premium (fully updated). Interestingly, I had no problem when I downloaded ICC profiles for a couple of paper-printer combinations; it's the online services that are giving me grief. Any idea what I can try next?

Keep in mind that your monitor puts limits on how useful soft-proofing is. If you have a standard-gamut monitor, what you see on-screen is already soft-proofed to sRGB (more or less). If your target profile has a larger gamut, you won't see any difference on-screen.
If you want to do this in Lightroom, just soft-proof to sRGB and you'll probably be fine. The histogram will show you if there is substantial channel clipping, and you can adjust to that. However, since you have Photoshop, my choice would be to do it there, using the Blurb profile.
Printing conditions vary widely around the world and CMYK-profiles likewise. To give you an example, US Web Coated (SWOP) v2, which is the Photoshop default, has a gamut much smaller than sRGB. In Europe the corresponding standard is ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI), which has a gamut that practically corresponds to Adobe RGB. To soft-proof effectively for this you need a wide gamut monitor.
Where the Blurb profile places in this I don't know.

Soft Proofing for Blurb

How do I creat a color profile in Lightroom for Blurb? I know they use HP Indigo printers (which are CMKY) but I would like at least a compatible color profile as well as options for when I creat books with different paper types. Do you have any suggestions so that I can be sure that my images are soft proofed for printing through Blurb?

Keep in mind that your monitor puts limits on how useful soft-proofing is. If you have a standard-gamut monitor, what you see on-screen is already soft-proofed to sRGB (more or less). If your target profile has a larger gamut, you won't see any difference on-screen.
If you want to do this in Lightroom, just soft-proof to sRGB and you'll probably be fine. The histogram will show you if there is substantial channel clipping, and you can adjust to that. However, since you have Photoshop, my choice would be to do it there, using the Blurb profile.
Printing conditions vary widely around the world and CMYK-profiles likewise. To give you an example, US Web Coated (SWOP) v2, which is the Photoshop default, has a gamut much smaller than sRGB. In Europe the corresponding standard is ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI), which has a gamut that practically corresponds to Adobe RGB. To soft-proof effectively for this you need a wide gamut monitor.
Where the Blurb profile places in this I don't know.

Changing color profile in Lightroom 5 Soft Proofing from ProPhotoRGB to sRGB is not showing any changes, changes in Photoshop CC are dramatic

I am working with the color profile ProPhoto RGB in both Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC. In preparing for my first Blurb book I have tried to generate pictures in sRGB in Lightroom, using the Soft Proofing feature, but there are no changes at all. Then I transfer the same pictures into Photoshop, change the color profiles and the results are dramatically different.
What can I do to achieve the same results in Lightroom

With an average monitor what you see on-screen is already soft proofed to sRGB (or something very close to it), because that's all the monitor is capable of displaying anyway. So soft proofing to sRGB won't tell you anything. You won't see any difference.
In Photoshop it sounds as if you assign profiles. That's not the way to do it. If you convert correctly you won't see any difference. Same principle as above: there may be clipping in the process, but what you see on screen is already clipped, so no visual on-screen difference.
With a wide gamut monitor soft proofing becomes slightly more useful. But still you won't see any changes occurring outside Adobe RGB. You'll get a better idea by keeping an eye on the histogram. Ideally, all three channels should taper gently off towards the endpoints. If any one or two channels are backed solidly up against the endpoint, on either side, that's gamut clipping.
If Blurb gave you a real profile, one that reflected their actual printing process, you could soft proof to that. But apparently they don't.

Rendering intent when displaying, exporting or soft proofing?

I am trying to make use of soft proofing to adjust my images for a given output device for which I have ICC profiles. The two profiles I am playing with are for a Lambda and a Fuji Frontier. The Lambda working space almost fits within Adobe RGB, it exceeds it in only a few places but is noticeably smaller for a number of other colors. The Frontier working space is for most colors a bit smaller than the Lambda and about equal for only a small number of colors. The Frontier working space would also almost fit into sRGB (to give you an impression of its size).
When soft proofing with Aperture, dark greens desaturate more with the larger Lambda working space than with Frontier one. If the rendering intent were relative colorimetric, colors should be clipped more and limited by the smaller working space of the Frontier. If perceptual is used then colors would in general be somewhat more compressed (ie, desaturated) with the smaller Frontier working space. But I see rather the opposite. In short, neither explanation makes sense.
So I tried exporting from Aperture into Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB hoping that both would be big enough to contain most of the internal gamut of Aperture in order not to require much compression or clipping when converting from the internal color space of Aperture (I saw no difference between Adobe RGB and ProPhoto RGB in the exported files, so I guess both are large enough for my purposes). And I then converted/soft proofed these files from Photoshop into my two output profiles. More options (different rendering intents, black point compensation) but none seemed to really match what Aperture was soft proofing. I still have a lot of ideas what to try out but if anybody could shed some light on rendering intents and soft proofing with Aperture, it would be very much appreciated.
(A related question, what rendering intent is used when converting colors, let's say defined in the Lab space in Photoshop, to the screen? I guess this is defined in the monitor profile, which in turn is created by the monitor calibration software, and therefore might depend on the latter. I would guess some kind of perceptual, but how the colors are really fitted and converted from the larger Lab color space into the smaller monitor one might very noticeably been different calibration software and will be different again for the monitor profile supplied by Apple.)

I went on about this a little more scientific by creating an image with three rectangles: red, blue and green.
All of them are 100%, e.g. (255, 0, 0). Colorspace: ProPhoto RGB.
Results when exporting the images to AdobeRGB and sRGB, concentrating on the reds:
- sRGB looks very washed out
- AdobeRGB looks a bit washed out
- Original ProPhoto has so much red that it almost drives me nuts
Now, I would really expect similar results when activiating soft proofing.
But when selecting either AdobeRGB or sRGB, the reds always drive me nuts.
There is just no difference at all to the original ProPhoto image!
Conclusion 1: Dorin, you were right, previews are in AdobeRGB. What I saw in the reds was the difference between ProPhoto and AdobeRGB. Somehow my screen seems to have extreme reds (calibrated recently with an X-Rite ColorMunki Display).
Conclusion 2: Soft proofing with AdobeRGB and sRGB really DOES NOT WORK!

[LR 5] Soft Proofing - Monitor Gamut Warning vary with printer profile ?!?!

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