Tired of making prints that look nothing like your on-screen images? We explain how to take control by soft proofing in Lightroom.
Most of us would file it firmly in the ‘boring but important’ category of image editing, but soft proofing is a vital skill for anyone wishing to make high-quality prints.
We put so much time and effort into taking photos and then editing them to perfection, so it makes sense to ensure the finished product is as perfect as possible. A few minutes spent soft proofing can make all the difference.
However, without proper colour calibration and the correct printer profiles there’s no point soft proofing, as the image we see on our screen could be entirely different to the resulting print.
So the first step is to calibrate your monitor using a device like a Spyder or ColorMunki. Then we need to find the relevant data for our chosen printer and paper. To do this, download the ICC profile that matches your printer from the paper manufacturer. Once this is done, we can begin the soft-proofing process.
Put simply, soft proofing is a means of ensuring the accurate transfer of colour from your monitor to a specific output device. Monitors can display a wide gamut of millions of colours, but printers have a smaller range.
So we are faced with a choice: we can either not think about it and hope for the best, or we can take control of the way in which out-of-gamut colours are pushed back into a printable gamut.
This usually involves desaturating certain colours in an image to bring them into the range that your printer is capable of reproducing. The simplest way to do this is to drop the saturation across the whole image, but that may result in lacklustre results. So the smart way is to reduce saturation selectively, either by targeting specific colours or adjusting particular areas of the proof. Here’s how it’s done…
01 Turn on soft proofing
Import your start image into Lightroom then go to the Develop Module. Press S, or check the Soft Proof box below the image, to enter soft proofing mode. The background turns white, which helps visualize how the print will look on paper.
02 Select a profile
Go to the Proof Settings at top right. Click on the Profile drop-down to choose a printer/paper profile – you’ll need to have downloaded these already. Choose ‘Other’ and highlight your favourite profiles to add them to the shorter list for quick access.
03 Turn on gamut warnings
Check Simulate Paper And Ink and Perceptual, then turn on the monitor and printer gamut warnings in the corners of the histogram. Monitor warnings show in blue, printer warnings in red; we need to alter colour or saturation until these warnings disappear.
04 Desaturate out-of-gamut colours
Reducing Saturation or Vibrance in the Basic panel removes the gamut warnings, but leaves colours too dull. Undo, then go to the HSL panel. Click the target icon next to the Saturation sliders and drag down over warning areas to desaturate specific colour ranges.
05 Make selective changes
As an alternative to reducing saturation, try shifting the Hue of individual colours slightly. Another option is to selectively desaturate areas. Grab the Adjustment Brush, dial in negative saturation, then paint over areas to bring them within the printer’s colour gamut.
06 Make test prints
It can be useful to see a side-by-side comparison of your changes. Click on the options below the image window for a before-and-after view of your changes. Once you’re satisfied with your soft proof, head to Lightroom’s Print Module and make your print.
Proofs and virtual copies
Once soft proofing is enabled, the first time you make a change to an image you’ll be asked whether you want to ‘create a virtual copy for soft proofing’. This makes sense, as it means you can create a new version of the image in Lightroom so that any changes you make for print preparation don’t affect the original image.
Click ‘Create Proof Copy’ and a duplicate is created (you can see it in the filmstrip at the bottom of the Develop Module alongside the original). As it’s a ‘virtual copy’, there’s not a physical copy of the image taking up valuable space on your hard drive.
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