Creating Custom Soft Proofing Profiles

[Remo Nonaz]

I finally upgraded my monitor to an Asus PA238Q, a unit more appropriate for photography work. This has helped immensely and I’m finding the Lr4 soft proofing much more useful now that I can rely on the starting point for my colors being accurate. However, I’m still getting prints that don’t match the monitor’s image perfectly.

Last night I was working with an image that had a lot of sky and sea in it. I got the blues just right and then adjusted the soft proof for my paper using a little more clarity and some brightness adjustments. This corrected the change from projected to reflected image nicely but the blues in the print are significantly more green than on the monitor. I know I could correct this in the monitor, but then the monitor would be off for web images and other use where I want the sRGB scale to be accurate. The monitor has a default, calibrated sRGB setting, which does seem to be very accurate. I'm assuming the change is in my printer and inks.

My question is; If I start with the soft proof profile for my paper, is there a way to then add to the profile creating an adjusted soft proof paper profile that includes the green of the printer? If I were able to do this, I could then adjust my final image, adding more blue or decreasing green, so that the printed image more closely matched the screen. I understand that this profile might not work with other images that are not so heavily blue, but I could save it as a special profile for similar images. What is the right way to do this?

[Alan Goldhammer]

You don't say that you are profiling your monitor, are you doing this?  I'm not familiar with the Asus monitor.  With a well calibrated monitor and print viewing conditions you should get a very close match between the print and what is shown on the monitor.  Web images have a restricted gamut and trying to correct things for this is a waste of time since most of the world who look at the web do not have calibrated monitors.  I don't understand the point you are making in the final paragraph.  If you have a good paper profile it should give you accurate colors since the whole purpose of the profile is the correct for differences.  Maybe the profile you are working with is not all that good which can be the case with some manufacturers supplied profiles.

[Remo Nonaz]

Alan:

The Asus PA238Q has a calibrated sRGB mode that comes with factory calibration test results and a guarantee of less than Delta E of 5% across 30 calibration points, so in sRGB mode I don't have to worry about the screen colors much. I do have a Pantone Huey Pro, but based on how it was doing with my old monitor, I can't speak highly of its ability to correct a screen. I haven't tired it with the Asus yet and am not actually planning to try.

The Asus does have 'User Mode' that you can use to set up a custom setting. I found a post that noted dropping the color temperature to 5500 improved the blue-green coloration of the monitor. I've tried this and agree it works. However, with heavily red-orange images the sRGB seems to be a bit closer to prints.

What I was trying to ask in the last paragraph was, is there a way to adjust the tone of the image in the soft proof view. Not changing the image by adjusting it to correct the soft proof, but actually getting a soft proof that has some changes built in. I suspect there is no way to do this other than to make your own ICCs, which I don't think I'm prepared to do.

Anyway, I'm miles ahead with the new Asus over the old LG.

[Mac Mahon]

Remo

If you do not actually profile your monitor you're going to be playing in the dark;  especially if, as I read your post, you're trying to get a 'good' match from print to screen.

My experience with relatively limited gamut monitors (~sRGB or so) suggests that they typically cannot display deeply saturated blues and cyans that are reasonably accurately represented in print, while they reasonably accurately display more saturated reds and yellows that are out of the printer's gamut.

Soft proofing gives you a good tool to push your image, but if you cannot be sure that your monitor profile is accurate, then you cannot be sure you're pushing in the right direction.  Worse, pushing a colour that may in any case be out of gamut on the monitor, may lead to unpredictable results, at best.  LR's soft proofing can show you which colours in your image are OOG on your monitor.

Tim

[PeterAit]

Is this a problem with more than one paper? The first thing that comes to mind is that the paper/printer profile is off, but if it happens with 2 or more papers from different manufacturers that's less likely.