out of gamut

[PierreVandevenne]

Printing has always been a pain for me. I did make some progress after watching "From Camera to Print" but I am still finding myself in hopeless situations with some pictures. Yesterday I shot a picture of my daughter in front of her piano (Canon 5D MK II, 28-70L, RAW, 1000 W softbox), imported the pic in Lightroom, bumped the exposure by 0.67, sharpened a tiny bit and exported a full TIFF for printing from Photoshop CS 3 to an Epson R2400. I set my soft proofing settings to Archival Matte and checked "Gamut Warning". The picture looks OK when shown on my calibrated (Spyder 3) 30" Samsung monitor but I was a bit surprised to see about 20% of it out of gamut. I followed several different tutorials on how to address the issue but can't come up with a fix that doesn't completely trash the original picture.

I wonder if I did something wrong or if there are intrinsically hopeless pictures in terms of gamut? Should I shoot with specific parameters if I am targeting a specific printer?

I ended up printing the file with Photoshop color management disabled and let the printer to the job with the ICM profile for Archival Matte. Had to tweak a bit and started with a slightly over satured file in Photoshop to get the look I wanted.

[NikoJorj]

Quick thought : what happens to these OoG zones in soft-proofing? Is the loss of detail dramatic? Does that match to the printed result?
What the OoG indicator doesn't tell is how far the color is from gamut limit... For me, it can point to where to put attention, but doesn't necessarily indicate a problem in itself.

Edit for a 2nd quick thought : keep in mind that the Archival/Enhanced matte gamut is narrow anyway...

[francois]

Quick thought : what happens to these OoG zones in soft-proofing? Is the loss of detail dramatic? Does that match to the printed result?
What the OoG indicator doesn't tell is how far the color is from gamut limit... For me, it can point to where to put attention, but doesn't necessarily indicate a problem in itself.

Correct, one area could just be 1% out of the gamut and another could be completely out of reach. I rarely (if ever) use the out of gamut warning these days.

Edit for a 2nd quick thought : keep in mind that the Archival/Enhanced matte gamut is narrow anyway...

Good point, luster, glossy papers are less problematic in this regard.

I can't reply to Pierre's question (did something wrong or not) but personally, I struggled a lot with some of my images and in the end, I used a different paper. I guess that expert users with better Photoshop skills than mine could probably end up with better results (on Archival matte paper).

[PierreVandevenne]

The effect is mostly visible on the darker areas of her hair: they become a bit hazy/milky. And an area around her out of focus arm, where it also shows up, as a hazy greyer area over the piano's black. Nothing dramatic, but now that I have seen it, I can't miss it.

Right on target with the limited Archival/Enhanced Matte gamut. Premium Glossy soft proofing has zero data out of gamut. ultrasmoothfineart_pk seems very good as well but ultrasmoothfineart isn't. I guess than in addition to being incompetent, I am printing with the wrong black (when shooting in colour) for my favourite paper!

Thanks a lot for the quick and extremely useful answer!