Soft Proofing and Color Shift

[Scotty512]

Sorry. Although I did state in later post that I put it at the top intially but I don't recall if I made my adjustment above or below. I now know that my adjustment's need to be below the soft proof layer.

[Scotty512]

21 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Ok, that at least means that the printer workshop profile never got selected as part of the production workflow, as Soft Proof only allows simulating a specific production conditions without actually making a change (I think it also only shows what would happen if you used current color values with another profile, which is not what is typically done; instead colors would be converted and mapped to preserve perceptual similarness EDIT: No, it does simulate conversion and mapping).

But this is not necessarily problematic as the printer color profile was sRGB or close to it. So the crucial question is whether your photos included a color profile or not. Often camera profiles use wider color profile than sRGB and if they use AdobeRGB, and colors are not converted but simply the profile changed, you would get darker / duller tones.

EDIT: The same would also happen if your JPG actually got an AdobeRGB color profile embedded, but the print workshop would simply just strip off the embedded color profile (this actually often happens). There is no harm having camera profile embedded, as long as the print workshop continues the workflow and performs the final conversions on their end, to produce color data that the print device expects to have. But if they instruct the customers to apply sRGB color profile to produce colors in expected color pofile, and simply just trust in getting that (ignoring any embedded color profiles), you would experience these kinds of problems.

Lagarto, sorry I wasn't aware that there is a limit to the number of posts per day.

I looked at the info for this picture and it says that it has the same color space and color profile I mentioned yesterday.

[lacerto]

(...)

[Scotty512]

1 minute ago, Lagarto said:

Do you remember how you applied the color profile for this photo (or if it initially had another color profile, e.g. Adobe RGB). As it is in this stage of the workflow that an error can happen that results in having darker tones than could be expected. On the other hand, if you have applied the profile in "early stage" (rather than at export time), you'd also have seen the change on screen. So it is likely that this does not explain the difference, after all.

I'm afraid I don't recall ever doing anything with the color profile.

[Scotty512]

12 minutes ago, Scotty512 said:

I'm afraid I don't recall ever doing anything with the color profile.

It appears that when you right click on an image (not in AP) that you get the specifications of your camera color space and profile. I wasn't aware of this. This is all new to me.

I then went into AP and looked at the preferences just for this image. I'm posting a screen shot below

[lepr]

11 minutes ago, Scotty512 said:

I then went into AP and looked at the preferences just for this image. I'm posting a screen shot below

 

That's the preferences for the app. It tells you nothing about a particular document or image.

 

[Scotty512]

1 minute ago, anon2 said:

 

That's the preferences for the app. It tells you nothing about a particular document or image.

 

Does that not dictate those parameters for the image?

[lepr]

11 minutes ago, Scotty512 said:

Does that not dictate those parameters for the image?

No, it specifies a default profile for a new document that you might create with each of the various colour models (RGB, CMYK, Lab, etc) and various other things to do with opening files.

 

[Scotty512]

1 minute ago, anon2 said:

No, it specifies a default profile for a new document that you might create with each of the various colour models (RGB, CMYK, Lab, etc) and various other things to do with opening files.

I'm just getting more and more lost here.

If as you say it specifies a default profile for a new document, would that not also have been in affect when this image was created? Not trying to sound argumentative at all, but just don't understand yet.

[lepr]

11 minutes ago, Scotty512 said:

I'm just getting more and more lost here.

If as you say it specifies a default profile for a new document, would that not also have been in affect when this image was created? Not trying to sound argumentative at all, but just don't understand yet.

For example, with your preferences, if you open a JPG from your camera (or exported from a raw developer app) that has Adobe RGB profile, then Affinity Photo will create an 8 bits per channel RGBA document with Adobe RGB profile, not the sRGB profile in your preferences.

If that JPEG has no profile, then the document it is opened into will be given sRGB profile.

[Scotty512]

3 minutes ago, Scotty512 said:

I'm just getting more and more lost here.

If as you say it specifies a default profile for a new document, would that not also have been in affect when this image was created? Not trying to sound argumentative at all, but just don't understand yet.

To the best of my knowledge, Affinity doesn't have much in the way of tutorials concerning color spaces and profiles do they?

[lepr]

Just now, Scotty512 said:

To the best of my knowledge, Affinity doesn't have much in the way of tutorials concerning color spaces and profiles do they?

This has valuable information: https://affinityspotlight.com/article/display-colour-management-in-the-affinity-apps/

Someone else will be more familiar with the available tutorials.

[Scotty512]

Thanks. 

[lacerto]

(...)

[Scotty512]

4 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Do you still have the orginal photo that you initially opened in Photo so that it could at least be seen what was the starting point. If it does have an embedded color profile that would have been automatically used as the "document color profile". If the profile was sRGB, or it did not have a profile, your workflow would have been according to specs of the printshop. If it had a profile other than sRGB, it would normally be embedded when you export your production file, and the printshop would then convert the colors to meet their workflow.

There are basically to stages where this can go wrong: 1) The printshop assumes that the data they get is already in sRGB profile and simply discards the embedded profile; 2) You switch the color profile yourself but do it by "Assign" rather than by "Convert" method. The symptoms of the output suggest that this could have happened, but there can be other reasons, too why the tones got darker.

Yes. See below.

And before I run into that daily post limit again, thanks to all for trying to help.

DSC_3402.NEF

[lepr]

3 minutes ago, Scotty512 said:

Yes. See below.

And before I run into that daily post limit again, thanks to all for trying to help.

DSC_3402.NEF 27.81 MB · 2 downloads

Since it's a camera raw file, it'll be opened into Affinity Photo's Develop Persona and then, when developed, you'll have a document with the profile specified in the app preferences for RGB or 32-bit RGB (depending on whether your Develop Assistant is set to produce a 16 or a 32 bits per channel image): in your case sRGB or sRGB linear.

[lacerto]

(...)

[lepr]

2 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Ok, you original had Adobe RGB profile [...]

It's a camera raw file. A camera raw file has no profile. The sRGB/Adobe RGB choice of a camera refers to JPEGs it creates, including the JPEG preview that is usually embedded in a raw file.

[Scotty512]

3 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Ok, you original had Adobe RGB profile but as it was a RAW file you probably developed it in Affinity Photo, and by default it would then get converted to 16-bit file with sRGB conversion, so basically according to the specs of the printshop. I am not sure if 16-bit color mode would have any effect on the production but I assume this would be ok with the specs of the printshop. On a general note your enviroment is such that you should get a good approximation of print output.

Any recommendations?  I don't want to run up against this with each image I want to print. That would be both too expensive and inconsistent.

[lacerto]

(...)

[lacerto]

(...)

[Scotty512]

42 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Did your printshop give any detailed instructions (even if for Photoshop or Lightroom)?

This is probably my last post of the day.

Print shop said do not embed their profile in the photo, but use sRGB, black point compensation, and perceptual rendering. That was about all. 

I'm considering making a couple of copies marked 1 and 2 and sending off to my local Walgreen's just as comparison. Number 1 being just as I sent to the good print shop and number two with a tweak or two. I know it won't be apples and apples but it may give a reference to the effects the changes make.

[lacerto]

(...)

[lepr]

1 hour ago, Lagarto said:

You could also try if the effect of just switching the measured profile to factory sRGB profile causes a change. It should not, because no matter what is the color gamut of your monitor, you should still see your sRGB photo correctly in a color managed environment like when viewing images in Affinity apps (and your screenshots already showed that your Color Preferences are correctly set).

Sorry to contradict you again, but changing the display profile should cause a change in appearance in colour managed apps, and that's the whole reason for creating a custom profile for a display. Scotty512's iMac has a wide a gamut display, close to P3, and if the display profile is set to the narrower gamut of sRGB then images will appear more saturated than they should, especially in the reds and oranges. Setting it to the factory iMac profile, which has an appropriately wide gamut for the hardware, should produce less difference than sRGB when compared with the custom profile he created.

This article will give you more information:  https://affinityspotlight.com/article/display-colour-management-in-the-affinity-apps/

[lacerto]

(...)