Soft Proof Profiling

Monitors and Prints will never be an exact match. 

When viewing an image on a monitor your eye is seeing transmitted light whereas when viewing a print, the eye is seeing reflected light. Light from a monitor can produce a much greater range of contrast and colour than prints on paper.

All devices and paper types, have a different range of colours that they can reproduce. This range is known as the "gamut". Your monitor will display a wider range of colours than the printer and paper can produce. Some colours will be fine but those that aren’t possible to reproduce are known as “out of gamut”.

Working with these limitations in mind, we work with a method that gets your print looking as close to the image that you see on your monitor as possible.

MONITOR CALIBRATION

Firstly you need to calibrate the monitor which you are editing your photographs on. Monitors come with factory default settings that are set too high in terms of brightness, contrast and colour.

Calibrating a Monitor means using an external calibrating device to adjust the colours and light transmitted from your screen. These devices attempt to calibrate your monitor to be more accurate in what it's showing.

Imagine sending a file to us to print for you, however when you receive it, it may be darker or brighter than you thought originally. You wouldn't be happy, and that's why calibrating a monitor is key.

There are several devices available to buy which will do this for you. The most popular of these include the Datacolor Spyder, the X-Rite ColorMunki and the X-Rite i1 devices. These come with a colorimeter which measures the output from the screen and software for your computer which works with the colorimeter and calibrates the display.

Some of the cheaper calibration devices will promise you more than the actual produce, so we would recommend sticking to the higher-end types, like those previously mentioned. All monitors can be calibrated, but a high-quality screen will produce better results and some are designed for colour accuracy as opposed to others which are just designed for all-purpose use at home or in the office.

COLOUR SPACE

We often get asked which colour space you should use. All our Giclée printers work in Adobe RGB (1998), so as a general rule of thumb, we would normally recommend using that.

We do not recommend files in ProPhoto, this has a wider gamut than printers can reproduce, as this usually produces prints that are dark and desaturated.

PRINTER PROFILES AND SOFT PROOFING

Once you are satisfied that you have calibrated your monitor as accurately as possible you can then use our Epson Printer Profiles to “soft proof” your images. At Artbox we have Profiles for each type of Paper that we use on our Epson 9900 Stylus Pro. These profiles allow you to see more accurately how your image will print depending on what paper you decide to use. Remember, what you see on a screen will never be an exact match to a print. Our Printer Profiles can be downloaded from our website here.

Once you have downloaded the appropriate Profile you will need to install it on your PC or Mac. Once installed it can be then used in Photoshop to see how your image will reproduce on your selected paper type. Depending on the type of paper you are going to output you might need to adjust your file before sending it to us to print.

To Soft Proof an image in Photoshop go to View > Proof Setup > Custom. This will then open up this window.

In “Device to Simulate” choose the Printer Profile of the paper that you want to print your image on. In the example above we have selected the Hahnemuhle PhotoRag Satin profile, printed on our Epson 9900 Large Format Fine Art Printer. Please set the Rendering Intent as “Perceptual” and have the Black Point Compensation box ticked. Leave the Display Options unchecked.

When viewing the “Soft Proof” version you might see a change in contrast or a certain colour that might need adjusting to get it looking how you saw it before going into the Soft Proofing view.

Once you have the image looking as you want it then it is advisable to save this version with the paper type in the file name.

When you are soft proofing you can also check if any colours will be out of gamut on that particular paper by going to View > Gamut Warning… anything that is out of gamut will be highlighted in grey. To bring certain colours within the gamut of the paper often the best way to make adjustments is doing so in Hue/Saturation.

DOWNLOAD ICC PROFILES HERE

All of our prints are produced by skilled printing technicians here in our Fine Art Photo Lab. We provide the very best, high-quality professional Giclee Prints at great prices. Transform your digital files into stunning prints that will last for generations to come.