ncJohn Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 I really enjoyed James Ritson's video tutorial on soft-proofing, but there's one thing I don't understand. He showed how to alter areas of a photo that are out-of-gamut by using curves or HSL to alter those areas so that they'll be in-gamut and will print accordingly. I had some photos where there were red areas that were out-of-gamut but I printed them anyway (just to see what I'd get) and the out-of-gamut areas printed a little bit differently than they looked on-screen (predictably) but they weren't terribly different. My confusion is: either way you wind up with areas that are a little bit different than they would have been if everything had been in-gamut. So why bother with adjusting the photo before printing? If you make the adjustments you have colors that are a little bit different from what you wanted, and if you don't make the adjustment you get colors that are a little bit different from what you wanted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 The advantage of doing the adjustments using soft proofing is that you know how the photo will look. You get to choose a color distortion that you're happy with. Otherwise you're just taking a chance on whatever the printer decides to do, and maybe its version won't be as good as what you could come up with. 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...
R C-R Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 2 hours ago, ncJohn said: I had some photos where there were red areas that were out-of-gamut but I printed them anyway (just to see what I'd get) and the out-of-gamut areas printed a little bit differently than they looked on-screen (predictably) but they weren't terribly different. If you shoot or edit in a wide gamut color space it is entirely possible that printing in a narrower gamut color space will result very different looking results. If you don't use soft proofing, the only way you will know if this is true is by 'hard' proofing -- IOW to waste paper & ink by actually printing the photo. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted July 10, 2018 Author Share Posted July 10, 2018 1 hour ago, walt.farrell said: The advantage of doing the adjustments using soft proofing is that you know how the photo will look. You get to choose a color distortion that you're happy with. Otherwise you're just taking a chance on whatever the printer decides to do, and maybe its version won't be as good as what you could come up with. Yeah, I can see this. I don't know if the part about choosing a color distortion you're happy with is supposed to be funny, but it kind of is. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted July 10, 2018 Author Share Posted July 10, 2018 17 minutes ago, R C-R said: If you shoot or edit in a wide gamut color space it is entirely possible that printing in a narrower gamut color space will result very different looking results. If you don't use soft proofing, the only way you will know if this is true is by 'hard' proofing -- IOW to waste paper & ink by actually printing the photo. Actually I use only sRGB, but these particular photos all have reds that are pretty saturated, and the results I got by bringing them back into gamut are no better than what I got by letting the printer do it. (No worse, but no better.) But I definitely use soft-proofing; the first time I ever read about it I knew that was the way to go. And I really like how they incorporated it as an adjustment layer in AP; I like that a lot better than the PS approach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 24 minutes ago, ncJohn said: I don't know if the part about choosing a color distortion you're happy with is supposed to be funny, but it kind of is. Funny or not, it is true that printing a digital photo 'distorts' the colors somewhat, even if the monitor is perfectly calibrated & adjusted using soft proofing to get the best possible match to the printer, paper, & inks. So it is not quite true that by using soft proofing you will know exactly how the print will look. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted July 10, 2018 Author Share Posted July 10, 2018 Just now, R C-R said: Funny or not, it is true that printing a digital photo 'distorts' the colors somewhat, even if the monitor is perfectly calibrated & adjusted using soft proofing to get the best possible match to the printer, paper, & inks. So it is not quite true that by using soft proofing you will know exactly how the print will look. Oh, I know; I've been printing for a long time. I've just never had a tool like AP that makes it so easy to see what's out of gamut and bring it back in. (To a distortion that makes me happy.) (Which still makes me laugh.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobinMcL Posted July 15, 2018 Share Posted July 15, 2018 I'm very new to all this and still, more or less, at the stage where I am trying to put my environment together. Of late, I have been giving a lot of thought to soft-proofing. I have spent time using the feature in Photo and have discovered the following. It is great to see how things will look and have the power to nudge things a bit. However, after I have made a few "nudges" I have lost the visual image of what it was I wanted in the first place. Surely, there must be a way to have two copies on the screen at the same time but only be editing one. Can someone please tell me how I can do this? Related, is the fact that, being inexperienced, I may know how I would like the image to change but NOT know how to accomplish it. From what I have read, EIZO has an app that works with Photoshop and some Epson and Canon printers to make this task a bit simpler. Does anyone know if there are plugins (that would work with Photo) or stand-alone apps that might help me here? I final question (though not on soft-proofing). Does anyone know how I could use the Datacolor SpyderCHECKR (48 patch) to create ICC profiles for my camera that I could then use with Photo? With thanks, Robin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted July 15, 2018 Author Share Posted July 15, 2018 3 hours ago, RobinMcL said: I'm very new to all this and still, more or less, at the stage where I am trying to put my environment together. Of late, I have been giving a lot of thought to soft-proofing. I have spent time using the feature in Photo and have discovered the following. It is great to see how things will look and have the power to nudge things a bit. However, after I have made a few "nudges" I have lost the visual image of what it was I wanted in the first place. Surely, there must be a way to have two copies on the screen at the same time but only be editing one. Can someone please tell me how I can do this? Robin, I can answer this part but I have to leave the rest to someone else. With your unedited original open, under the Document menu, click "Add snapshot." Then from your Snapshots palette select your snapshot and click "New Document from Snapshot." (If your snapshots palette isn't open, you can open it from the View menu>Studio.) This will give you an untitled copy of your original, which you can edit. This isn't as elegant as the PS method of just duplicating your active image but it works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobinMcL Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 Thanks for the help. I'm slowly getting there. Cheers, Robin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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