Soft-proof images

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/WS2bacbdf8d487e582-5591e4a41341ae6cc6d-8000.ht ml

Thank you, THANK YOU for Julieanne's video as a part of your explanation here. If I were to try and understand better about 'soft proofing' images in advance of export to print by simply reading the text here I'd go cross-eyed trying to digest it precisely. This is a problem I have found with most of Adobe's (LR and PS) Product Support pages (as well as most of its 'Classroom in a Book' content, unfortunately the default "textbook" used by much of Academia). To be fair, Adobe seems to be focused on "explaining" pretty complex topics with the fewest possible words. (Who wants to read these days?! Such a chore, eh?) With Julieanne's video though she explains everything you might ever care to know about soft proofing – its utility, features in LR that will assist in bringing images back into gamut for WHATEVER specific surface one intends to work with for their final product printed – and WHY. She has always been, continues to be The Very Best in explaining the complexities of working with this great application. Thanks for including the screencast!

Similar Messages

How to export soft-proofed image?

Hi !
Maybe I'm completely off but I didn't find any info on the subject.
I have soft-proofed image with a profile that a specific printer provided me.
I want to export the image that I soft-proofed to be displaying them as an album in Photoshop.
I didn't find any way to export the soft-proofed files.... Is it something that makes sense ?
Let me know.

Dorin Nicolaescu-Musteață wrote:
Just export it and select the soft proof profile in the Export dialog.
To add to this for the OP, you might need to select Other... option from the color space popup to access the profile. It will remain within the list now.
And if it isn’t RGB, it isn’t going to show up (LR only supports RGB profiles).

Costco and soft proofing show dull washed out image

OK, so I am trying to utilize my nearest costco to print some images from lightroom 5. I am getting back dull washed out prints.
Facts:
I shoot in RAW in manual mode
I am using sRGB when I do my post processing
I export to jpg for printing
I used the costco LR5 plugin from Alloyphoto to upload to Costco
I have installed the printer profiles from drycreek for the specific location/printer and have chosen the correct profile as I export
I made sure that I chose to have Costco NOT autocorrect the color
Even when I use LR5's soft proofing, I get the same result on my monitor
I checked the print I got back and it says that they did NOT autocorrect (taken with a grain of salt)
The machine they are using is a Noritsu QSS-A, so I know my profile is correct
I have attached a screen shot of what I am seeing.
Why am I seeing this on my soft proofing as well as my prints?
How can I solve this and get vibrant prints?
Any advice would be helpful.
Message was edited by: moviebuffking

moviebuffking wrote:
I have calibrated my monitor as good as I can get without specific hardware. I have 18 years experience calibrating monitors (via optical media and my eyes), so I know that mine is very close.
It is virtually impossible to "accurately" set the Luminance, Gamma, and Color temperature "by eye." This is most likely the cause of your prints not matching the screen image you see in LR. That being the monitor's Luminance (i.e. Brightness) level is too set to high.
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/colour_management/prints_too_dark.html
To see if this could be your problem I downloaded the posted screen shot and cropped out the 'Copy' image, which has your adjustments applied to it. Here are my results:
Click on image to see full-size
I needed to apply a full F stop (+1.0 EV) of Exposure correction to achieve a good midtone brightness level for the print image. You'll notice I also added -50 Highlights and +50 Shadows along with +25 Vibrance. I bet the image with my adjustments added looks way too bright on your uncalibrated monitor.
You have two (2) issues–Monitor Calibration and LR Basic Panel Control Adjustments
Monitior Calibration
I would highly recommend investing in a hardware monitor calibrator such as the X-Rite i1 Display and ColorMunki, or Datacolor Spyder models. If you tell me what make and model monitor you are using I can recommend specific calibrators.
Temporarily you can try adjusting the monitor "by eye" to get it closer to the desired 120cd/m2 Luminance, 2.2 Gamma, and 6500K Color Temperature using the test patterns at this site:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/
When the monitors Brightness and Contrast controls have been correctly set the screen image should look much closer to the prints you have recently made with the LR Soft Proof adjustments. So in fact you will be adjusting the monitor to make it look bad with the LR adjustments you applied. The proper monitor settings will make the Lagom test patterns look correct AND should make your bad Costco prints now match the screen image using you original LR settings.
After changing the monitor's Brightness and Contrast settings try readjusting a few of the image files you had printed and send them to Costco as check prints. Compare them again to your monitor's screen image. They should be much better!
LR Basic Panel Tone Control Adjustment
LR's PV2012 Tone controls can provide much improvement to your raw image Highlight and Shadow detail. Start with all of the Tone controls at their '0' default settings and adjust them from the top-down in the order shown below.
1. Set Exposure for the midtone brightness ignoring the highlight and shadow areas for now. Setting Exposure about +.5 EV higher than what looks correct for the midtones seems to work best with most images.
2. Leave Contrast at 0 for now. You’ll adjust this after the first pass.
3. Adjust Highlights so that blown out areas are recovered and “fine tonal detail” is revealed.
4. Adjust Shadows to reveal fine detail in dark areas. For most normal images simply setting -Shadows = +Highlights (Example -50 and +50) works very well.
5. The Whites control sets the white clipping point, which you can see by holding down the ALT key as you move the slider. Adjust it to the point where you see clipping just appear with the ALT key.
6. The Blacks control sets the black clipping point, which you can see by holding down the ALT key as you move the slider. Adjust it to the point where you see clipping just appear with the ALT key.
7. Now go back and adjust the Contrast control to establish the best midtone contrast.
8. Lastly touchup the Exposure control for the best midtone brightness.
9. If necessary “touch-up” the controls using the same top-down workflow.
moviebuffking wrote:
Am I correct in assuming that the soft proof (with a certain profile) is a "preview" of what that print will look like?
Soft Proof does two things. It shows you what the image's colors will look like in the target color space (i.e. printer profile). You can see what (if any) colors are "out of gamut" by clicking on the small icon in the upper-righthand corner of the Histogram. You can also see if any of the colors fall out of your monitor's gamut by clicking on the small icon in the upper-lefthand corner of the Histogram.
When you check 'Simulate Paper & Ink' the Soft Proof image's contrast and color saturation are changed to make it look closer to what the "reflective" print image will look like when held next to the monitor for comparison. Many people have difficulty using 'Simulate Paper & Ink' since it requires using precise light levels for viewing the print and a well calibrated monitor.
In summary my best suggestion is to purchase and use a good hardware monitor calibrator on a scheduled basis to insure you have an "accurate" screen image inside LR and other color managed applications like PS.

LR4: Soft Proofing Batches Of Unique Pictures?

Hi. I was wondering if there is a way to do batch processing for soft proofing different pictures similar to the sync functionality? I created a customer user preset however it seems to copy over the existing settings vs updating the +/-'s in the different areas. For example, I have a bunch of photos from different scenarios, events, actions, times, etc..
When I am soft proofing to a custom profile, looks like I just need to apply a few universal tweaks to WB (+100), exposure (+20, maybe +30), contrast (+10), blacks (-10), and clarity (+10, maybe +15) to get the soft proof copy to look like the master copy. Then I can quickly go through the soft proof copies and check. Is there a way of doing this?
Also, is there a way of creating a soft proof copy of all the pics in the develop module at once?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Cheers,
George

smilingcdn@yahoo wrote:
Andrew and trshaner, thanks for the replies. Andrew, your answers definitely leave the impression that its a challenge to have good quality pics from big box photo labs. I guess this is a chance we choose to take.
I've always gotten very good results from my Costco Photo Center in Ocean, NJ. Post #28 at the link I provided shows tests results I got using sRGB with and without soft proof corrections:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4865815#4865815
smilingcdn@yahoo wrote:
I will need to read more the potential downside by not having the local adjustments not reflected in the global adjustment tools. Not familiar with this yet.
There's no downside as long as you remember that's how you are applying the "additional" corrections to your soft proof copies. If you need to go back and make additional corrections to any of the soft proof copies you can either update the Graduated filter settings or apply a 2nd Graduated filter with those changes.
Just be aware that LR applies the Local Adjustment BEFORE the Global Adjustments. The potential danger is that if you apply controls like +Exposure to an image area that is near 100% highlights you will push the image into clipping. The Global controls will NOT be able to recover the clipped data! The same holds true for an image with deep shadow areas. If you use -Exposure your shadows can become clipped. This applies to use of ANY Local adjustments for ANY purpose, not just soft proof adjustments, so you need to be aware of it at all times.
Since you'll only be making minor color corrections and very moderate tonal corrections to the soft proof images there's very little likelyhood you'll see this issue. For all other usage apply Local settings that REDUCE HIGHLIGHTS and/or RAISE SHADOWS and you won't have a problem.

Soft Proofing Alterations Happen on Original aswell as Virtual (Proof) Image

When soft proofing, I split the image horizontally and then create proof image when asked after making first alteration.
However, in both LR4.4 and 5Beta, both the original and virtual (i.e., proofing image) change.
Example. Have l Brightness value of 55 in original. Proofed image is duller. Increase brightness in proof by 10 to match original. (Figures are just for explanation) Now when I compare images again, original image brightnesss has increased by 10 also. This can be seen, of course, on the Develop panel.
Obviously, proofing won't now work properly, I think.
What is wrong here?

After you make a develop-change in <Softproof> you should get a dialog box that gives tyou three options:
<Undo> - <Make This a Proof> - <Create Proof Copy>.
Are you selecting <Create proof Copy>?
Only then a Virtual Copy is created that shows the altered state while the original remains without the alteration.
If you select <Make This a Proof> the original image will be changed.

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.

Can I soft proof in LR4 like I can in PS CS5?

I haven't used LR 4 yet, but did view the soft-proofing tutorial.
I applaud Adobe for adding this functionality in LR4. It was one of the most obvious lacking features in the previous version, and I've still been mostly doing all my printing through PS CS5.
While soft-proofing is not a perfect replacement for test printing, I've been mostly satisfied with proofing in CS5.
Proofing in LR4 seems a little different, but by using a virtual copy it looks like if I use my printer/paper profile I should theoretically be able to not only be able to deal with color gamut issues, but also adjust contrast & brightness to more closely match my original developed image, and could compare the original with virtual copy in compare mode. Is it that simple? And if so, why is there a contrast & brightness adjustment in the Print module? That latter adjustment would be similar to what one goes through in PS CS5 when soft-proofing prior to printing. However, why have it if it can be done in the Develop module......and regardless, from the video tutorial it looks like you can't preview the image after making those adjustments in the print module nor compare it with the original......thus forcing one to make multiple prints until the result is satisfactory.
Just seems to me there is a bit more tweaking to do in LR4 to make the soft-proofing more functional. Or, perhaps I'm too stuck with the paradigm set forth for soft-proofing in PS and need someone to clarify how I can achieve the same result in LR just as confidently.

Beaulin Liddell wrote:
BTW, I've benefited immensly from your and Martin's Evenings books.......you've never steered me wrong.
Thanks for the kind words...but LR4's soft proofing is worth the effort to use. It really is better than Photoshop's soft proofing. I'm still on the fence regarding VCs vs Snapshots for soft proofing It's a tossup but the VC part has been built in while making a snapshot wasn't.
The advantage of LR4's soft proofing is you get the ability to do a Before/After while still using the full range of LR4's controls to adjust the printed version. Makes it really easy to nail great print (assuming you have good print profiles).
As for the Print module Brightness and Contradt...that's really a special case that doesn't involved color managed output. It's a crutch for those who don't have a locked down system. It's east to tweak but you have to make example prints since the controls don't actually display but only impact the output. I tend to avoid that.

Soft proofing: how to A/B?

Hi all,
I'm kinda new to soft proofing, so maybe this is a silly question, but here goes:
My workflow for printing is that i first tweak my photos so they look like how i want them on my computer monitor, for uploading to Flickr.
After that i choose the one(s) i want to print (Epson 3880) and go into "soft proofing" mode.
After i've tweaked the photo to compensate for the print, i want to A/B with my original. What i've noticed is that i need to generally add a bit more brightness and vibrance to approach (on physical paper) what i see on my computer screen, so i want to be able to A/B between my original photo and the proof copy.
But the thing is, when i do this the "soft proofing" module remains engaged for both my proof copy (that's ok) and for my original photo (not ok!) which was tweaked to look good on the computer and never meant to be printed, and on which i never did any soft proofing!!!
This makes it really hard to A/B between the two copies.
So why doesn't the soft proofing module automatically turn off when you switch to another photo on which you haven't done any soft proofing?
Hmmm, clear as mud methinks!
But does anyone see what i mean and could offer any tips?
Thanks! ......... D

Daz V wrote:
So why doesn't the soft proofing module automatically turn off when you switch to another photo on which you haven't done any soft proofing?
Soft Proofing "simulates" on your computer display (transmissive) what the print copy (reflective) will look like in your hands. The two are radically different in contrast ratio, black level, and white level achievable, so it makes little sense to try and compare the two. They will always look quite different. The goal is to adjust web based images so they look good onscreen, and print based images with 'Soft Proof' so they look good in the actual reflective light viewed print copy. What are you trying to achieve?
You can view them side-by-side by windowing LR and your browser and viewing the image in both at the same time. In fact that would be much close to reality, since browsers aren't always properly color managed. Two separate displays would be even better for this purpose.

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

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.

Soft proofing in LR 4

I purchsed and downloaded LR 4 online. In the Develop Modue when I want to soft-proof. I press 'S' to get the soft proof menu but do not have the soft-proof box under the image that I see in ALL the examples when going through tutorials. I tried closing LR and restarting computer, doesn't help.

Hit the T key to toggle showing/hiding the toolbar...

Soft Proof in LR: Put it in LR!

I must have (like that, must have?) soft proofing abilities in LR if I am going to be able to use LR for preparing images for printing.
Cheers

Soft-proof was first introduced in LR4. You can download the free trial to see if it's what you hoping for. I don't use it so I don't know much but from what I've heard you can only proof RGB profile but not CMKY. Hope this help.

Can you Soft-Proof in PSE 6 before printing?

Is there a way to soft-proof in PSE? I have createded custom ICC profiles for my monitor and printer/ink/paper combinations (using SpyderPrint) and would like to soft-proof the image on my monitor before printing. I know you can do this in Photoshop CS3, and it can save lots of of ink and paper, as compared to proofing from prints. Thanks.

Thanks, Richard. I should mention that there's at least one add-on program that claims to add soft proofing to PSE, but in my opinion it's not useful, since to really see what something looks like on paper you need to have access to CMYK and nothing can make PSE able to do that. I've tried the add-on and it brings up the softproof dialog box, but the changes you make there mostly have no effect on what you see onscreen, unfortunately, due to the limitations in the PSE code base.
Don't forget that as PSE owner you can usually upgrade to full PS for $299. Adobe sends email about this periodically, but in my experience, if you call adobe sales you can usually talk someone into letting you have it even when it's not officially offered, although you might have to call a couple of times till you get lucky.

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!

Convert to Profile & Soft Proofing.

Hello,
Apologies if this has been asked and answered. Some answers on soft proofing searched on the forums helped, but didn't hit the nail on the head.
I'm grateful for ideas, instruction, pointers.
I. Per the instructions of the printer who's printing my work, I've converted my image profiles to Dot Gain 20%. I would like to make sure that what I'm seeing on my screen will a) be a close match to what she (the woman printing the work) will see on her screen; and b) give me a sense of how the printer (Espson Stylist Pro 4800) will interpret and print the work. It makes sense to me that I should change my Proof Setup to Dot Gain 20%, no? Do I have this wrong?
II. I also need to make a set of jpegs that will be seen on a variety of screens, each of a different make and calibration. These jpegs need to be as convincing a match to the print as possible, with allowances, of course being made for paper, ink, etc. The match has to be close. Is there a standard for softproofing that will allow me to see what's likely to appear on a given screen. A tall order, I know. Wondering if I should just inform the viewers to view the jpegs with their monitors set to a certain color profile--or if I should send them a monitor profile along with the jpegs.
Again, I'm grateful for ideas.
Best-
Gear: iMac 27"; Native Gamma 2.2; CS6.

I've converted my image profiles to Dot Gain 20%. I would like to make sure that what I'm seeing on my screen will a) be a close match to what she (the woman printing the work) will see on her screen
if YOUR monitor profile is proper, Photoshop is 'accurately' displaying your image
to see your image the same, SHE (or anyone) will need to apply your source profile and also have a proper monitor profile
give me a sense of how the printer (Espson Stylist Pro 4800) will interpret and print the work. It makes sense to me that I should change my Proof Setup to Dot Gain 20%, no? Do I have this wrong?
Gernot offers a good approach (what I would recommend):
"Leave images in sRGB (Working Space sRGB)
Modify by PhS until the appearance is nice
In Soft Proof choose your PP"
in other words, "Soft Proofing" (View> Proof Setup> Custom: Device to Simulate: the specific Epson profile) -- it doesn't make much sense to Soft Proof source DotGain20% to device DotGain20%
my question to her would be: is Dot Gain 20% the actual Epson Print Space (or does she use a specific printer-paper-ink profile that you can Soft Proof on your 'calibrated' monitor)
if she doesn't do any conversions to your DotGain20 file (it is the Print Space), then Photoshop is showing you the contract proof on your monitor when you open it (is my opinion)
I also need to make a set of jpegs that will be seen on a variety of screens, each of a different make and calibration. These jpegs need to be as convincing a match to the print as possible
here, i would Convert to sRGB and embed the sRGB profile -- short answer here -- that is the best you can do

Soft-proof images

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