Ation for you printing experts

[keithrsmith]

As I understand it, soft proofing allow one to see (more or less) what a print will look like on the paper, and according to Schewe you then put on an additional curve to bring the view of the print back to close to what you wanted in the first place.

The question is - why can't the program do most of this for you? - after all, it has the original image, and it has (via the soft proof) what the printer will produce, so can't it generate a curve to "fix" the result.

I suspect it's not that simple, but it it should be possible.

In Lightroom, maybe the "print curve" could be a separate function some how attached to the paper profile.

Keith

PS That title was meant to be " A question for all you printing experts"

[rdonson]

My experience has been that auto anything rarely produces optimum results.  In the case of softproofing Jeff is also careful to point out that it gets you 90% of the way there.  The final 10% is experience and choice.

[Tklimek]

Hey!  Not a bad idea....

What I also read in another post on this board (somewhere) is that you run into problems with the color gamut of your image does not match or fully "covers" the image gamut.  Decisions will need to be made as to which tones/colors "don't get the love" and which ones do.  I believe that part of the process is a highly subjective choice and is probably the reason why softproofing isn't really done automatically.  I'll let some of the wizards here who actually KNOW what they are talking about to provide a better answer.

:-)

Cheers...

Todd

As I understand it, soft proofing allow one to see (more or less) what a print will look like on the paper, and according to Schewe you then put on an additional curve to bring the view of the print back to close to what you wanted in the first place.

The question is - why can't the program do most of this for you? - after all, it has the original image, and it has (via the soft proof) what the printer will produce, so can't it generate a curve to "fix" the result.

I suspect it's not that simple, but it it should be possible.

In Lightroom, maybe the "print curve" could be a separate function some how attached to the paper profile.

Keith

PS That title was meant to be " A question for all you printing experts"
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[Mark D Segal]

As I understand it, soft proofing allow one to see (more or less) what a print will look like on the paper, and according to Schewe you then put on an additional curve to bring the view of the print back to close to what you wanted in the first place.

The question is - why can't the program do most of this for you? - after all, it has the original image, and it has (via the soft proof) what the printer will produce, so can't it generate a curve to "fix" the result.

I suspect it's not that simple, but it it should be possible.

In Lightroom, maybe the "print curve" could be a separate function some how attached to the paper profile.

Keith

PS That title was meant to be " A question for all you printing experts"
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=220512\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

It's not possible because the Soft Proof is like a filter showing you what will happen when you squeeze a wider gamut colour working space into a narrower gamut printer space (to the extent your display allows). The choice of Rendering Intent gives you some control over how out of gamut colours will be treated, and that is already an automatic transformation once you select your preferred Intent. But you may not like how the result looks. Adding a Curves and/or an HSB Adjustment Layer while in Soft Proof mode allows you to make choices about luminosity and colour appearance in order to try to re-create the effects that please you. There is no software which can make the decisions satisfactorily, because how you manage to deal with the impact of the paper/ink combination on the appearance of the final result is largely judgmental.

[Geoff Wittig]

As I understand it, soft proofing allow one to see (more or less) what a print will look like on the paper, and according to Schewe you then put on an additional curve to bring the view of the print back to close to what you wanted in the first place.

The question is - why can't the program do most of this for you? - after all, it has the original image, and it has (via the soft proof) what the printer will produce, so can't it generate a curve to "fix" the result.

I suspect it's not that simple, but it it should be possible.

In Lightroom, maybe the "print curve" could be a separate function some how attached to the paper profile.

Keith

PS That title was meant to be " A question for all you printing experts"

Software can perform mathematical operations on pixels. It can't tell what a print should look like, because that's a subjective aesthetic determination. To my eye soft-proofing in Photoshop provides an exaggerated view of the loss of gamut and contrast you get in the transition from screen to paper. This can give you a rough idea of what kind of contrast and color moves might bring you closer to the screen appearance.

The best practical discussion of proofing and adjustment I've found is at www.johnpaulcaponigro.com where the artist provides a series of downloadable PDF's on the subject. Good stuff.

[madmanchan]

It is possible to do this, but (1) it requires a very intelligent tone and gamut mapping algorithm, which takes into account the tonal and color range of the image, the limitations of the printer, and the content of the scene, and (2) no matter how good it is, it will be subjective.