Kerwin Posted July 4, 2018 Share Posted July 4, 2018 Hi everyone, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of soft proofing, or, rather, I feel like I'm missing some obscure nuance on it. I've read all of Affinity Photo's help files and watched all its videos AND spent hours bouncing around the web trying to come to grips with the subject. But here's the thing: as near as I can determine, soft proofing is always presented as something that you do after having processed the photo to what you want it to look like. So, by definition you're telling yourself, "all right! That's what I want my print to look like. Let's soft proof it... uuuhh, no, that's not it". Should this not be the other way around? That is, if your goal is to print a photo, shouldn't the very first adjustment layer be the soft proof adjustment layer, with the pertinent icc file and rendering intent chosen, and THEN you do all your other adjustments on top of that to get the photo how you want it to look? Also, let's say that you can do things in that order; when I'm done with all the other various adjustments, should i still deactivate the soft proof layer before sending the photo to the printer? I thank you all in advance for any light that you can shed on this subject. Happy post-processing to all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted July 4, 2018 Share Posted July 4, 2018 7 minutes ago, Kerwin said: should i still deactivate the soft proof layer before sending the photo to the printer? Yes, you would still deactivate the soft-proof layer before sending the file to the printer. Otherwise, there are adjustments (e.g., the printer profile) that will be applied twice, and will therefore give incorrect results. Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted July 4, 2018 Staff Share Posted July 4, 2018 Hi Kerwin Most users tend to use soft proofing after applying edits, as far as I am aware this is usually done in this order so that you can edit your original image until you are happy with it, duplicate the file, then use soft proofing set to the correct profile and edit the copy to visually match to the original as possible. I've had a quick look online and I can't see any users who apply soft proofing before applying their edits. Provided it is disabled before being sent to print, I cannot see an issue with this workflow, but I'm more than happy to be corrected if this is not the case as I've not had to use the feature for any professional printing projects personally! (alliteration is key ) Quote Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave. If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap. Many thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toltec Posted July 4, 2018 Share Posted July 4, 2018 4 hours ago, Kerwin said: Hi everyone, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of soft proofing, or, rather, I feel like I'm missing some obscure nuance on it. All soft proofing does is temporarily adjust the image you see so that it matches the final print better. If you did it from the beginning, you permanently alter the image. Soft proofing compensates for the fact that you monitor cannot match the output from a professional printer. Lots of reasons for that. However, because the soft proofing layer matches by distorting the colours in your image, you do not want to send the distorted image to be printed. e.g. if your monitor made the image on your screen look too blue. a soft proof layer would reduce the blue in the image so that it looked better (less blue). But, because the soft proof layer has removed blue from the image, if you sent the altered image to the printer, there would not be enough blue in the image any more. So turn the layer off. As I said, it is purely a temporary method of adjusting what you see locally. Alfred 1 Quote Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted July 4, 2018 Share Posted July 4, 2018 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerwin Posted July 6, 2018 Author Share Posted July 6, 2018 Hi to all and just a post to say thanks to all those who responded! So the take home message: adding the soft proof layer is usually done after, but can de done at the start as long as... it stays on the TOP of the stack... and one remembers to deactivate it BEFORE sending the file to the printer Again, thanks for helping me see all that more clearly and à bientôt! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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