Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Tutorials
Output / Soft Proofing
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers / Output / Soft Proofing)
After you have sized and sharpened your file, you're ready to print it. Some photographers will choose to soft proof their images first. Since monitors use light differently, even though your monitor is calibrated and you'll print using print profiles, the print may well look different than the monitor. That's because prints use reflective light and the amount of reflection varies by type of paper. In addition, the gamut of colors that a monitor can display is slightly different than what a printer can print. So to get a better idea of precisely how an image will look when printed, you can soft proof your image. To begin, go to Image, Duplicate and click OK. Next we'll come up to Arrange Documents and choose the Two-Up Vertical Mode. You can tell which of the two is selected because the tab is lighter and the scrollbars are in color. Let's go up to View, Proof Setup and choose Custom. Next, we set the device to Simulate and what we're looking for is our printer paper combination. So if I'm using the Epson 4800 with enhanced matte paper with matte ink, I would choose this profile. Next I need to specify the Rendering Intent and I can use Perceptual or Relative Color or Metric. The Rendering Intent controls what to do with colors that are out of gamut or out of the range of colors that the printer can print. In Relative Color or Metric, Photoshop simply substitutes the nearest in-gamut color and leaves the rest of the colors as they were. Perceptual brings the out-of-gamut into the closest color it can print but changes the other colors to maintain the same relationship among the colors; therefore more colors are actually changed this way but sometimes the results can look more natural to your eye. In most cases, you'll want Relative Color or Metric. For this image we have very little change; just a little and then click Simulate Paper Color. We turn the Preview off and on now, you can see that the image is a little duller. We'll click OK. So this is now our Soft Proofed version and this is the original way we liked it. There will be times when everything will still be acceptable but at other times you're going to want to adjust the soft proofed image to try and make it look a little closer to the original. With the soft proofed image selected, open an Adjustment Layer or two and make whatever changes are necessary. In this case, I'm going to use a Curves Adjustment to just make the image a little lighter, brighter. I really noticed the difference in this area so I'll use the On-Screen Adjustment and now I think that the two are a little bit closer. Let's turn off and on. On some images you may need to add a little contrast and with others you may need to add a little bit more saturation, especially if you're converting to CMYK. When you're done, you'll use the soft-proofed version with the additional adjustments to make your prints. Then your prints should look the way you hope it will, assuming that you've color calibrated your monitor with a device such as the Huey, Monkey or Spider. Taking the time to soft proof your images will save the time, hassle and expense of creating prints that don't look the way you expect them to. Once you've set your proof choices, you can toggle Proofing off and on up here.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers |
| Author: | Ellen Anon |
| SKU: | 34036 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-74-2 |
| Release Date: | 2009-09-23 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 112 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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