Attached are 2 screenshots of a photo I have open in PS. The first is the normal view. The second is with softproofing turned on. I have soft proofing configured correctly and this proof view is actually a very accurate rendition of how the photo will look when printed on the Frontier 390 machine my printer uses. All images are natively in sRGB mode.
The obvious comment is that the proofed version of the image is a lot duller than the normal version and that is indeed how the print comes out. This isn't a moan about not-very-accurate-colours when printing, it's a moan about what I assume is the result of different technologies. :) My screen, being a light emitting device, shows the image a lot brighter and more colourfully than the print can ever be. I think I'm just a bit spoilt and and maybe a bit unrealistic about how bright a printed image should be. Or am I?
What I'm trying to do is use CM to lift the colours and brightness of the image when in soft proof mode so it looks more like the image normally displayed on my monitor. This seems rather hard. The best I've been able to get so far is by making the RGB curve into an S shape, then lifting the 2 points above the diagonal. This raises contrast and brightness, at least to a point. I can't get it to match how the monitor normally looks, but at least it's an improvement.
So, my questions are:
1) Am I just bouncing off the limit of what printing technology can do, or am I using the wrong technique, printer, or something else?
2) If I can use CM to get more colour into the soft proofed image, what's the best way of going about it?
Printing photos, getting the colour back - can CM help?
Soft proofing is actually a rather tricky proposition for several reasons. First, as you know, you need a good profile for the printer that includes paper color information, as well as a good display profile. Once these two things are in place, it's time to tackle the next set of problems, which have to do with how the eye accommodates to color and contrast.
Comparing the soft proof directly with the screen version will always make the soft proof look drab, and you've already pointed out the exact reason for this: the printer has a smaller gamut, and a smaller dynamic range.
Strictly speaking, it's best to hide all non-image elements, including the cursor, and allow the image to sit on the screen against a black or dark gray background. Then wait a while - 30 seconds or more - for your eye to get used to looking at the soft proof. At that point you are coming relatively close to experiencing what the print will look like (albeit under a certain type of bright, cool lighting not available to mortals).
OTOH, printers, being ink based, generally do better at shadow nuances, so the texture of the black tire that frames the group may turn out surprisingly well.
To answer your question, though, yes, you can jack up the colors. My guess, though, is that once you have the print in your hand, the colors will appear too exaggerated. For this reason, I question the value of using a soft proof in the first place. Unless the output device has some special quirky characteristics (a cake frosting printing machine, for example) there is little benefit to this sort of preview. Best to get the image looking good in sRGB (or other working space), and then have the printer do the best that it can.
Comparing the soft proof directly with the screen version will always make the soft proof look drab, and you've already pointed out the exact reason for this: the printer has a smaller gamut, and a smaller dynamic range.
Strictly speaking, it's best to hide all non-image elements, including the cursor, and allow the image to sit on the screen against a black or dark gray background. Then wait a while - 30 seconds or more - for your eye to get used to looking at the soft proof. At that point you are coming relatively close to experiencing what the print will look like (albeit under a certain type of bright, cool lighting not available to mortals).
OTOH, printers, being ink based, generally do better at shadow nuances, so the texture of the black tire that frames the group may turn out surprisingly well.
To answer your question, though, yes, you can jack up the colors. My guess, though, is that once you have the print in your hand, the colors will appear too exaggerated. For this reason, I question the value of using a soft proof in the first place. Unless the output device has some special quirky characteristics (a cake frosting printing machine, for example) there is little benefit to this sort of preview. Best to get the image looking good in sRGB (or other working space), and then have the printer do the best that it can.
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derekfountain
- Posts: 251
- Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:24 pm
Soft proofing is actually a rather tricky proposition for several reasons.
...
Best to get the image looking good in sRGB (or other working space), and then have the printer do the best that it can.
Mike, this is a hugely useful post for me. I've been asking this question on and off in various forums for over a year and have never really got a straight answer to it. I've heard people say soft proofing is in many ways pointless, but I've never had anyone explain why.
Looking at my prints in isolation (i.e. with the computer turned off!) they look fine. It's only when I look at them on screen and compare the print to the monitor that I get disappointed and frustrated. The difference is always there and with some images it's really marked. I thought I had to be doing something wrong, but it seems I'm just hitting the limit of technology. I can live with that, now that I know it.
However, it's worth asking - is there's anything else I can do to get a brighter print? I have a few more credits with the print company (I asked them for advice, and although they were very helpful and gave me more credits to experiment with I didn't really get any hard information out of them). I'll try jacking up some of the colours to see if they do look weird, both in comparison to the screen and the prints I've already had done.
Would using a different printer get me anywhere? Particularly my own inkjet? A few years back I had an Epson Photo printer and was very impressed with the quality of the images it produced, but eventually gave up with it because I couldn't get my calibrated workflow right. Now that I understand calibration better, do you think I'll get the brighter prints I crave from inkjet technology? Or any other printing technology I might be able to buy into? What do magazines use? Do they suffer and live with these issues or are there solutions if you know where to look?
I think it's something to live with, maybe pushing the envelope a bit, content that no one else can do better. Transparencies provided a way around this problem because the print becomes its own light source.
Magazines suffer, even more so, from this issue because the paper brightness, and ink gamut for any press is smaller than for a Fuji Frontier, and even smaller than an inkjet.
There are some interesting things that printers can do that are not possible on a CRT. The big one is shadow detail - a CRT or LCD simply can't represent a lot of different values down in the dark range of the display, while a printer, with layers of ink at its disposal, can.
You can also get extremely pure cyan, magenta, and yellow on a printer- though these are so pure that they are seldom used in photography, being reserved for packaging, line art, and the like. If you ever travel in Asia, they make more use of pure CMY in their products and packaging than in the west.
When it comes to high key images, and pure red, blue, or green, display technology will always outdo printer technology. The more recent Epson printers, starting even with the 1270, have a larger gamut than a Frontier.
Absolutely you can punch up the contrast, and get as bright and saturated a look as possible. For this, I would use soft proofing with the gamut warning turned on to warn you when you've gone too far, rather than as a way to see what the print is going to look like.
OTOH, as time passes, I find myself going for the darker prints because of the richness. if you look at original gallery prints from people like Adams, Weston, Cunningham, and even Stieglitz, you'll see that their prints are incredibly dark, some not even touching pure white. This is, I believe, because they intuitively realized that silver prints could display more texture and gradation in the darker tones. Adams was incredibly touchy about blowing out highlights, and would dry his prints in the microwave to make sure that the highlight detail was retained after drying.
Magazines suffer, even more so, from this issue because the paper brightness, and ink gamut for any press is smaller than for a Fuji Frontier, and even smaller than an inkjet.
There are some interesting things that printers can do that are not possible on a CRT. The big one is shadow detail - a CRT or LCD simply can't represent a lot of different values down in the dark range of the display, while a printer, with layers of ink at its disposal, can.
You can also get extremely pure cyan, magenta, and yellow on a printer- though these are so pure that they are seldom used in photography, being reserved for packaging, line art, and the like. If you ever travel in Asia, they make more use of pure CMY in their products and packaging than in the west.
When it comes to high key images, and pure red, blue, or green, display technology will always outdo printer technology. The more recent Epson printers, starting even with the 1270, have a larger gamut than a Frontier.
Absolutely you can punch up the contrast, and get as bright and saturated a look as possible. For this, I would use soft proofing with the gamut warning turned on to warn you when you've gone too far, rather than as a way to see what the print is going to look like.
OTOH, as time passes, I find myself going for the darker prints because of the richness. if you look at original gallery prints from people like Adams, Weston, Cunningham, and even Stieglitz, you'll see that their prints are incredibly dark, some not even touching pure white. This is, I believe, because they intuitively realized that silver prints could display more texture and gradation in the darker tones. Adams was incredibly touchy about blowing out highlights, and would dry his prints in the microwave to make sure that the highlight detail was retained after drying.
BTW - you might want to experiment with using masking to bump the saturation of very bright colors. Dan Margulis emphasized this technique when he suggested adding masks to Curvemeister. I have to admit I've done precious little to develop this technique, being busy with other things, so this remains an unexplored, and very promising, area of Curvemeister.
My 2 cents FWIW.
This is the same problem we faced 20 years ago with RA4 Print Paper. The "how white is white" question. Brighter base paper was always more expensive, and if you printed in CybaChrome direct from slides...you always kicked butt on negatives. It has been and will continue to be a battle of pigments vs paper. Now, you have a backlit monitor showing you brilliant highlights, the brightest papers will never approach that or as Mike pointed out shooting chromes.
In a way that is what we do digitally. Shooting Chromes...The difference to me is that you used to have to push and pull process chromes and you could get 1-1.5 stops of exposure change. You always held exposures back (4x5 View cameras) if you missed the mark you could process adjust to try to recover the missing parts. Now we see the backlit images and we can adjust the exposure post exposure. Derek, you seem to be hitting the edge of the papers abilities....Good Job...
The way I was taught and this is really better off in the neutral discussion...was...
Are the blacks black?
Are the whites white?
Is there detail in the shadows?
Is there detail in the highlights?
A yes to all = good print...any no's and you had to go reprint the image to get all the yes answers. This held for color as well as b&w. (many hours in the dark were wasted due to those 4 questions...)
Greg
This is the same problem we faced 20 years ago with RA4 Print Paper. The "how white is white" question. Brighter base paper was always more expensive, and if you printed in CybaChrome direct from slides...you always kicked butt on negatives. It has been and will continue to be a battle of pigments vs paper. Now, you have a backlit monitor showing you brilliant highlights, the brightest papers will never approach that or as Mike pointed out shooting chromes.
In a way that is what we do digitally. Shooting Chromes...The difference to me is that you used to have to push and pull process chromes and you could get 1-1.5 stops of exposure change. You always held exposures back (4x5 View cameras) if you missed the mark you could process adjust to try to recover the missing parts. Now we see the backlit images and we can adjust the exposure post exposure. Derek, you seem to be hitting the edge of the papers abilities....Good Job...
The way I was taught and this is really better off in the neutral discussion...was...
Are the blacks black?
Are the whites white?
Is there detail in the shadows?
Is there detail in the highlights?
A yes to all = good print...any no's and you had to go reprint the image to get all the yes answers. This held for color as well as b&w. (many hours in the dark were wasted due to those 4 questions...)
Greg
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derekfountain
- Posts: 251
- Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:24 pm
To answer your question, though, yes, you can jack up the colors. My guess, though, is that once you have the print in your hand, the colors will appear too exaggerated. For this reason, I question the value of using a soft proof in the first place.
I know this thread has been long since dead, but I thought I'd add a conclusion, now that I've got one. I finally got round to getting some more photos printed and have been pondering the results.
Recall that my printed photos were coming out duller and less saturated than they appeared on screen. My soft proofing set up is accurate, and this confirms that the photos are coming back from the printer exactly as expected. The question is, can I boost the way the soft proof looks on screen with CM, and if I can, does it result in a brighter, more colourful, but still natural looking photo? From the quote above you'll recall Mike was doubtful.
The answer, happily, is that the photos do look better. In fact, much better. The CM technique I settled on was to ensure soft proof support was enabled in CM, then to use the S and B curves in HSB mode to lift the less saturated colours (the left side of the curve as I have it) and the low to mid brightness.
From there it looks OK on screen with soft proof turned on (although horrible when soft proofing is turned off!) and the print still matches the soft proof very accurately. Better yet, the print looks natural. Mike's concern that trying to force a print to match the way it looks on screen turns out to be unfounded, at least with my selection of test images. Obviously the prints aren't going to ever really match the screen representation, but they do look brighter, more colourful and generally much improved over the first batch I had printed.
I'm delighted. Finally, after what has been several years trying, I've found a workflow that gets my prints matching my screen images, and produces results I'm really happy with. Chalk up another one for CurveMeister!
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derekfountain
- Posts: 251
- Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:24 pm
I'd enjoy seeing them as well please share...
Hmm, I'm having trouble getting an example for sensible comparison. This one works quite well in PS, but in a non-colour-managed web browser it doesn't look quite as convincing. But let's have a look anyway.
This is a photo of my partner on the beach in her favourite jumper. The first image is the "screen" version - that's the one that goes into my PC-based photo album or website. The second image is how that first image looks with soft proofing switched on, and (when viewed in PS) is an accurate rendition of how the print looked. It's drab and washed out. It looks worse in a web browser than in PS or print, but to me the print was still not bright or colourful enough.
The third image is a soft proof of how the image looked after I'd had a go at it with CM with soft proofing turned on. Again, it looks better in PS than a webbrowser (the blues in the jumper look terrible in my browser, but are fine in the print). The print looks great - not quite screen levels of brightness, but much, much better than the first version of the print. I'd put this final print on the wall, but would have thrown the first effort away, so it's a huge improvement
I might have spoken a bit soon about the overall success of my experiment, however. I have a couple of images with a lot of green in them and, on closer examination, those have come out looking pretty horrible - the greens on the prints are really garish. The soft proof shows the greens looking a bit bright, and comparing them with the prints shows they look pretty similar, but whereas they look OK on screen, the same colours look shocking on glossy paper. I think this is the effect Mike was driving at.
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