Soft Proofing?

[DJSoulglo]

Hey Guys,

Here's something I know absolutely nothing about. Here at work they're thinking about switching from physical proof to soft proofing.

Anyone have any experience and or advice about how and what programs to use?

Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks

[mistermonday]

The Soft Proofing tools in Photoshop work just fine.
Regards, Murray

[TEastman]

I personally use Lightroom 3. The main consideration is to make sure your employer has also taken into consideration how they will do their monitor calibration.

[madclark]

Well to explain first what soft proofing is, it's using whatever program you use to manage your images to help you see what an image might look in a certain environment virtually. So instead of printing the image to review, you'd see an on-screen representation of what the image would look like in the real world.

Photoshop has soft proofing capabilities. I'm guessing Lightroom and other similar programs do as well. But you should make sure your computer and monitor are set up for this correctly to begin. I would highly recommend getting a colorometer that can calibrate your monitor at least, or one that also calibrates for different papers and printing output. You need to make sure your monitor is calibrated regularly, and usually after it's been on and running for a while.

You also need to know what output you're optimizing the soft proof for. What kind of printer will be used? What kind of print stock will be used? These components also affect the output depending on what gamuts they can render and display.

You can also better optimize your image to print closer to the original by knowing the intended output. Reds and greens notoriously are less easy to duplicate in a print environment. With soft proofing, you can make more informed decisions about changes to make to an image to better present it in the real world. For example, you can know right away what colors would be out of gamut for the printer you will be using. You can then make adjustments to bring those colors in gamut so you are control those decisions rather than leaving it to the printer.

Here is some more specific information in doing soft proof in Photoshop. I also would recommend picking up a book on color management as well. This would give a much fuller description of the theory and practice of optimized output and soft proofing.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...proofing.shtml

Finally though, keep in mind that soft proofing is only a best guess substitute for hard proofs. They allow you to get pretty close in helping envision the output, but it's not something you want to rely on if the output is critical.

Hope this all helps.

[DJSoulglo]

Thanks guys.

Now the thing I was wondering about, there are certain systems that allow you to have a dedicated soft-proofing monitor (obv calibrated) at the client side, where you kind of share the image online, so you're looking a live version of what you're working on and the client can see that as well.

Any clues about that?

[Heretic]

we have been using a soft proofing system for about a year now, Remote Director by http://www.icscolor.com/, it seems to work really well for our application. We area major catalogue company out of Canada with a weekly flyer and four 800+ page catalogues produced every year. It has saved the company costs in running hard proofs with ink, paper and maintenance. Not for everyone but it works for us.

[andrewrodney]

Lightroom (and ACR) unfortunately do not have soft proofing. FWIW, shameless plug, soft proofing was covered in both the archived webinars I did recently on color management and printing. But there’s also this:
http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200409_rodneycm.pdf
http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200411_rodneycm.pdf

[pixelzombie]

i only have experience with the Kodak MVP system, it does a good job of simulating a matchprint, the only problem is getting getting clients to calibrate the monitors on their end...

[DJSoulglo]

Thanks, got some reading to do