Adobe Community: Soft Proofing: View > Proof Setup > Custom: Profile Disappears when Re-opened

J. H. Moore

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Soft Proofing: View > Proof Setup > Custom: Profile Disappears when Re-opened

Jun 24, 2012 9:07 AM

Tags: #color_management #soft_proofing #soft_proof #printer_profile #proof_setup

Photoshop CS6 on Mac

Edit an image file and get it to where I like on the monitor

Duplicate the file and set the new file to the profile for the printer which will be used, by using View > Proof Setup > Custom and setting an imported printer profile for the printing company that I use.

As soon as you do that, the file looks like crap, so...

Edit the soft proof file to get it to where it looks good again.

Save off the file for the printer and also save the new PSD file.

Close the PSD file.

Reopen the new (soft proofed) PSD file.

Still looks good, but.... when you check View > Proof Setup it's now generally set to Custom: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 instead of to the imported printer profile which was set previously. WHY???? Where did the printer profile go? Is it supposed to do this?

If I then reset View > Proof Setup to the correct printer profile, the image goes to crap again.

Is this me doing something wrong, or is the PSD file not properly remembering the printer profile, or... what's going on here?

Thanks much!

1802 Views 27 Replies Latest reply: station_two, Jun 26, 2012 12:37 AM

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1. Jeff Schewe,

Jun 24, 2012 6:11 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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J. H. Moore wrote:

Still looks good, but.... when you check View > Proof Setup it's now generally set to Custom: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 instead of to the imported printer profile which was set previously. WHY???? Where did the printer profile go? Is it supposed to do this?

I think you are confused about soft proofing...when you set up the Proof Conditions, you aren't "importing" a print profile, you are simply looking at the image through the soft proofed printer profile to see what the image would look like when printed. There is no "import" of the profile into the image. If you want to do that you need to use the Convert to Profile command...and yes, by default soft proofing defaults to SWOP Coated CMYK....that's as designed. You can change the default soft proofing by having no image open in Photoshop then go to the View/Proof Setup/Custom and select a different profile. When you do that and quite and restart Photoshop the default proof conditions will be defaulted to the new profle.

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2. J. H. Moore,

Jun 25, 2012 2:02 PM in reply to Jeff Schewe

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Thanks Jeff,

To be clear, the print profile is "imported" because it's one supplied by an outside printing house... not native to Adobe.

When you make a new (duplicate) PSD file during the soft-proofing process, is it not supposed to remember the color/printer profile for the next time that you open that file? Is soft proofing a one-shot deal--edit things without closing and reopening and you can never come back and continue the edits if the print wasn't exactly what you wanted? That doesn't make much sense to me.

If I make a good-looking soft-proofed file, close it, reopen it, the printer profile is now gone. If I set it again to that printer profile, the image goes to crap again... which you wouldn't think it would do if you'd already modified the file to look good with that printer profile.

So either I'm REALLY missing something here or something isn't working right....

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3. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 2:48 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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J. H. Moore wrote:

…To be clear, the print profile is "imported" because it's one supplied by an outside printing house... not native to Adobe…

No, you're not "importing" anything at all. You're just pointing Photoshop to the directory where that profile is and Photoshop uses the profile momentarily, temporarily to simulate for you what the image would look like when viewed or printed under that profile. It's just a temporary thing.

There's no such thing as profiles "native to Adobe".

J. H. Moore wrote:

…When you make a new (duplicate) PSD file during the soft-proofing process, is it not supposed to remember the color/printer profile for the next time that you open that file?…

No, not through Proof View / Soft proof. See above.

As explained to you by Jeff Schewe in an earlier post:

…by default soft proofing defaults to SWOP Coated CMYK....that's as designed. You can change the default soft proofing by having no image open in Photoshop then go to the View/Proof Setup/Custom and select a different profile. When you do that and quit and restart Photoshop the default proof conditions will be defaulted to the new profile…

In other words, the proof profile is not applied to the image file, only to your monitor and only temporarily.

J. H. Moore wrote:

…Is soft proofing a one-shot deal…

Of course it is. It has to. That's the whole point of soft proofing, to allow you to see what your image would look like under that profile without actually touching the pixels in your file.

Whatever edits you make to the file should definitely be applied to the image pixels when you save the file. You're confused there.

J. H. Moore wrote:

…either I'm REALLY missing something here or something isn't working right…
Everything is working just fine, you're missing the whole point of soft proofing.

Message was edited by: station_two

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4. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 2:49 PM in reply to Jeff Schewe

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Please note I've edited my previous post to add: "…when you save the file."

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5. J. H. Moore,

Jun 25, 2012 3:31 PM in reply to station_two

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Thanks station_two,

It's entirely possible that I'm not understanding something about soft proofing here, but there's a gigantic logical problem with the "it's all ephemeral, one-shot-only, fix it then bail" theory for soft proofing: If I fix things for a particular printer and then save a new/duplicate file with those changes, and then later come back and reopen that file... it should look maybe OK, maybe a little off when opened (and viewed with the default color profile) and look great once I again switch into the correct printer profile. But it doesn't. Once you reapply the correct printer profile to the edited-closed-reopened new/duplicate file, it looks like total crap again. Given the answers above, it should look great.

That also makes zero sense for any kind of practical printing workflow, where there's a really good chance that you won't get it right on the first try and the printer is often not in your office. I have a hard time believing that Adobe would set it up so that you'd have to start over again.

Let me come at this another way:

Let's say that I have a photo that I've spent some time editing to look great on a monitor. But now I want to print it. The photo printer is in another state. I have the printer profiles for their printer and have imported said profiles.

Let's further assume that it is likely to take me MORE THAN ONE PRINT to get the photo to look like I want it to look.

What SHOULD I be doing to create a duplicate image file that is prepared for a particular printer and be able to go back and tweak said file for test print #2, #3, etc.?

Thanks.

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6. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 4:27 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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None of what you write makes any sense whatsoever to me, sorry.

Let's start by using correct terminology. For the last time, you are not "importing" any freaking profile. Wrap your head around that once and for all, please.

Let me try once again, totally disregarding the scenarios you were unsuccessfully attempting to describe above. Forget all that mumbo jumbo for now, please.

You have not mentioned what your working space is, so let's assume it's Adobe RGB.

You have finished editing an image, so now you have an AdobeRGB-tagged image. Fine.

Now you want to soft proof it to see what it will look like in that FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper printer in Anchorage. (Made up names of course.)

So you make a duplicate COPY of your finished image file named BabyPictForPrint.psd. You're still in Adobe RGB, of course. You put the original away in a safe and forget about it—forever. That's like your negative in film days.

Now you soft proof the BabyPictForPrint.psd COPY by using the infamous FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper.icc profile the outfit in Alaska sent you.

When you soft proof it with that Alaska profile, you have not imported anything. Photoshop is simply using the profile you pointed it to to show you in your monitor what it would look like. Your pixels so far are untouched, yet yo see your image "die" before your very eyes. Ouch! Now you need to compensate for the effect of printing under those proposed conditions, so you set about the task of editing the copy accordingly. Remember, you're still in Adobe RGB.

Once you have the copy just the way you like it, YOU SAVE ALL YOUR CHANGES in that copy. Now you have a fully edited image file in the Adobe RGB space but tweaked to look fine when printed in the FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper printer.

At that point you are done! Finished!

Now you are faced with two choices:

A) Sending the finished, saved ADOBE RGB COPY to your printer if you consider him capable of knowing what he's doing. (If you think he does not know his business, look for another printer). Or…

B) Assume you're dealing with a moron on the other end who wants the image CONVERTED to his custom FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper.icc. If that is the case, then open your COPY in Photoshop, go to the Edit menu > CONVERT to Profile… and convert the copy to the infamous FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper.icc profile. It's critical to use CONVERT TO Profile, not "Assign Profile"!

At that point, under scenario B), you do not EVER want to return to Proof View / Soft Proof mode, ever, EVER again, because then you would be applying the profile doubly and you'd see your image die before your eyes once again, and if you edited it you'd have real elephant poop!

Hope that helps.

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7. J. H. Moore,

Jun 25, 2012 5:10 PM in reply to station_two

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I'm going to ignore the tone and the silly semantic arguments about how the non-native ICC profile magically appeared in my computer... and move to the content... which mostly ignored my issue.

Let's say that I take your Scenario A, above, but the results aren't what I wanted. I want to re-edit BabyPictForPrint.psd, still using FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper.icc -- apparently elephant poop is a more challenging print medium than I thought, and I need to have a second go at it.

I reopen BabyPictForPrint.psd. If it is true that the FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper profile was in no way saved/placed into the BabyPictForPrint.psd file, then I'm no longer viewing it as if was going to print on that lovely elephant poop paper, so I need to reapply the FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper ICC profile for soft proofing. If all of this were true, once I reapply FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper.icc, then the BabyPictForPrint.psd should look fabulous. But it doesn't. It looks as wonked as it did the first time that I applied FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper.icc.

OK, I made a screenshot movie of my issue:

http://johnhmoore.com/jhmoore-soft-proof-issue.mov

(Note that I was wrong... it didn't come back up with correct ICC profile, it's a slightly different one at the same company (perhaps the last one that I'd used before closing & reopening Photoshop itself??). I realized this after recording the video and checked that moving it to the exact correct (originally used) ICC profile got the same results as shown in the video -- it did.)

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8. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 5:27 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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I'm done here. I don't need this. You want to argue, not to learn. Wasting my time here...

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9. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 5:32 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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J. H. Moore wrote:

...Let's say that I take your Scenario A, above, but the results aren't what I wanted. I want to re-edit BabyPictForPrint.psd, still using FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper.icc -- apparently elephant poop is a more challenging print medium than I thought, and I need to have a second go at it.

I reopen BabyPictForPrint.psd. If it is true that the FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper profile was in no way saved/placed into the BabyPictForPrint.psd file, then I'm no longer viewing it as if was going to print on that lovely elephant poop paper, so I need to reapply the FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper ICC profile for soft proofing...

CORRECT!

... If all of this were true, once I reapply FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper.icc, then the BabyPictForPrint.psd should look fabulous. But it doesn't...

Yes, it will look fabulous IF YOU KEPT IT in AdobeRGB and saved all your edits in the file.

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10. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 5:36 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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Note I ignored your video, as I am not in the habit on clicking on links to unknown sites.

You can embed a video in your post by using the little video icon in the Reply Bar editor.

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11. J. H. Moore,

Jun 25, 2012 5:36 PM in reply to station_two

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Yes, it will look fabulous IF YOU KEPT IT in AdobeRGB and saved all your edits in the file.

Yes, but... that is not what it is doing! Thus my confusion and questions.

I made a second video, which might make it more clear:

http://johnhmoore.com/jhmoore-soft-proof-issue-2.mov

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12. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 5:39 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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Link to unknown site ignored once again. Sigh...

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13. J. H. Moore,

Jun 25, 2012 5:46 PM in reply to station_two

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The video icon only accepts video from certain domains, none of which I use. I do use Google+ and have uploaded the video there. If you consider Google.com to be safe, feel free to view the second video here:

https://plus.google.com/115982055845994675852/posts/CGuM53pbS6j

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14. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 5:55 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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J. H. Moore wrote:

...say that I take your Scenario A, above, but the results aren't what I wanted. I want to re-edit BabyPictForPrint.psd, still using FujiWonderPrinterInAlaskaUsingMatteThaiElephantPoopPaper.icc -- apparently elephant poop is a more challenging print medium than I thought, and I need to have a second go at it...
Then your color management is broken. You shoulod NEVER have to go back after soft proofing. That is thye whole point of soft proofing, to show you EXACTLY WHAT YOUR PRINT IS GOING TO LOOK LIKE.

If it's not doing that, then your monitor profile is hosed, maybe the monitor is not accurately calibrated and profiled REGULARLY AND OFTEN, or your color settings are all wrong.

You could embed screen shots of ALL relevant settings or anything else you want in your posts by using the little camera icon in the Reply Bar:

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15. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 6:04 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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Your video on Google is diminutive. I could not read a single setting. Nothing happens when I click on full screen.

However it doesn't really matter. My previous posts are as clear as I can make them. I have nothing else to add myself.

Read THIS WHOLE web site carefully:

http://www.gballard.net/psd/cmstheory.html

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16. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 6:06 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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The video icon SH OULDaccept a video from your own computer, no need to upload it to any domain first.

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17. J. H. Moore,

Jun 25, 2012 7:46 PM in reply to station_two

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The video icon SH OULDaccept a video from your own computer, no need to upload it to any domain first.

It clearly doesn't, if you simply click the icon....

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18. J. H. Moore,

Jun 25, 2012 7:49 PM in reply to station_two

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Your video on Google is diminutive. I could not read a single setting. Nothing happens when I click on full screen.

However it doesn't really matter. My previous posts are as clear as I can make them. I have nothing else to add myself.

I watched the video on Google+ prior to posting the link here and you can clearly/easily select higher quality and view it full screen.

Thanks for playing along, but this really hasn't at all addressed my common, real-world issue of needing to re-edit a file after test printing it....

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19. station_two,

Jun 25, 2012 8:32 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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Even at max HD, 1040 whatever, the video is useless.

You need to (1) get out of that screen mode and go to Standard Screen/View mode, and (2) get out of that awful dark interface. As it is now, I can't see what the document color space is, nor what menu items you are choosing.

I can guarantee you it's user error. PEBKAC. (Google it if you're not familiar with the term PEBKAC.)

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20. Jeff Schewe,

Jun 25, 2012 9:42 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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J. H. Moore wrote:

Thanks for playing along, but this really hasn't at all addressed my common, real-world issue of needing to re-edit a file after test printing it....

Look...here's the deal, soft proofing allows you to set up a Proof Preview (it's ONLY a preview and not saved in your image file) to aid in adjusting an image for a specific output profile. That profile is not saved in the image (unless you do a convert to profile). If you adjust an image, save, close and reopen and wish to soft proof again you have to again set up the Proof Setup...

The way you use soft proofiing of to set up the Proof Setup with the correct profile (you can save that proof setup and name it and it'll show up as an option in the drop down menu), make image adjustments–ideally as adjustment layers–I do this and put the image adjustments made due to soft proofing into a seperate Layer Group named with the profile.

If you need to output images for various different printers, each printer would end up with it's own set of soft proof based adjustments in it's own layer group...the only key is to make sure you have one and only one group turned on at a given time otherwise you'll double correct.

The concept you need to understand is that ideally, you edit an image to be a "master image" completely disconnected from any output considerations...for a specific output, you use the correct profile to soft proof, make adjustments as adjustment layers you can turn off/on and organize the adjustment layers for later use, ideally in a named layer group.

Saving the image will save the various adjustment layers that allow you to come back to the image, turn soft proofing on with the right progfile again and modify/tweak the previous adjustment layers to fine tune what eventually will end up as you final image that is then converted to that profile for that particular output device.

You really need to understand the logic and the features of soft proofing...

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21. conroy,

Jun 25, 2012 10:14 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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Still looks good, but.... when you check View > Proof Setup it's now generally set to Custom: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 instead of to the imported printer profile which was set previously. WHY???? Where did the printer profile go? Is it supposed to do this?

I find that when a document is opened or created, its Proof Setup is initialised to that of the previous active document (as long as the profile has not been removed from the installation, I presume). The first document of a Photoshop session will have the Proof Setup of the last closed document of the previous session.

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22. J. H. Moore,

Jun 25, 2012 10:20 PM in reply to Jeff Schewe

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Thanks Jeff Schewe,

What you describe is what I've done -- except that I haven't done multiple printer profiles within one file, which is a nice idea... thanks.

The problem is what I show in the second video... I've saved a PSD file with a set of adjustment layers which brought the image from [edited for a monitor state] to [edited for printer XYZ state]. Since the proof preview is not saved into the file (I did not convert to profile), when I reopen that PSD file with those adjustment layers turned on, it should look a little off perhaps, but then once I turn back on proof preview for the printer, it should look just right. As you'll see in the second video, the opposite of that is happening.

If I'm doing something wrong, I'd love for someone to be able to tell me what...

2nd video: http://johnhmoore.com/jhmoore-soft-proof-issue-2.mov

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23. Jeff Schewe,

Jun 25, 2012 10:57 PM in reply to J. H. Moore

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Yeah well you are running full speed down a rabit hole (without understanding why or how)...

You start off with an image on whatever your working space is (you don't really say what space you are working in). Your "master RGB image" should look good'ish without any adjustments. You turn on Proof Setup and soft proof the printer profile and make some changes while the soft proofing is on...fine. If you are doing it correctly and have a good profile you should be able to predict what the image will look like with the profile (soft proofing on) or without the profile (soft proofing off). If the adjustment layers are visible when you convert to profile prior to sending the image off for printing, everything should be good. You seem to be confusing yourself by flattening (not sure if the adjustments layers were on/off) and looking at some random JPEG you saved (which is really only complicating the process).

You really have screwed yourself into a really screwed up place.

First off, have you tested outputting you image to the output profile you have been given and checking the accuracy of the profile? No? Shame on you since looking at an image on screen and in output and seeing what is what is what soft proofing is all about. Trying to solve the whole industry disconnect by using soft proofing ain't gonna give you a happy place...

When you soft proof the odds are you're gonna have to adjust the contrast (to deal with differences in contrast range) and Hue and Sat (to deal with differences in well, hue and sat in the final output...

I looked at the vids...sorry, your vids are as confusing as your posts on the forum. I suspect you know neither the correct terminology (hence the confusion) nor the correct procedure for soft proofing...

I think you need to learn and understand the basics...try Adobe TV or look into the Luminious-Landscare.com Camera to Print & Screen tutorials
(Yes...I am involved in the tutorial production so you want to take what I say with a grain of salt).

As it stands, you are making this much more convoluted than you need too...you want to adjust your master image to the best it can be, then soft proof and make further adjustments that are output specific and be sure those are turned on ONLY when outputting to THOSE specific conditions....

The bottom line is that you, as a user needs to advance your skilling for optimal output....

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24. J. H. Moore,

Jun 25, 2012 11:39 PM in reply to Jeff Schewe

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You really have screwed yourself into a really screwed up place.

Couldn't agree more!

Started off thinking (wrongly) that once I set the PSD file to soft proof for a printer, it would "remember" (be set to) that printer after the file was closed and reopened. That is not correct. (So then why the heck does everyone tell you to make a duplicate file???? Just put it in a layer group in the original file.)

Was disabused of that notion, but in testing this and comparing files, I made a critical error in not making the connection that if the duplicate PSD wasn't remembering the printer it was soft proofed for, when closed and reopened, then the JPEG output from that file also wasn't remembering the printer profile it was using when it was saved. In my earlier tests, I opened the JPEG saved from the soft proofed PSD (the "this is what got printed" file in my head) and compared it to the soft proofed PSD (closed and reopened). When first reopened, they looked the same. But when you reapply the printer profile to the PSD, it LOOKS like it's all going to crap again. The reality is that when you first reopen them, neither one looks like it did when you were soft proofing them. Both are contrasty, saturated versions (assuming that the soft proofing involved adding contrast and saturation), and when you reapply the printer profile to the PSD and it mutes, it's actually muting back to where you had it / wanted it... but your (my) brain is still screaming in the visually perceived agony of lost contrast and color and misses that it's going where you want it.

For whatever it's worth, I have printed a fair number of prints from a FIRST soft proofing and the hard copies that come back seem fairly what I am expecting ... like the soft proofing is working just fine. The problem arose when I wanted to further tweak some files that had already been soft proofed and I got into the rathole of "what's in this soft proofed PSD? does it remember the printer profile that was used or not? do I have to do something to it first when I reopen it in order to continue editing it for that printer, or is it all set to go? etc..."

Ugh, that was painful. But now I think I'm caught up.

If you're interested, I screen recorded several additional tests this evening... here's the one where I finally am getting it... assuming that I'm now getting it!

http://johnhmoore.com/jhmoore-soft-proofing-3.mov

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25. station_two,

Jun 26, 2012 12:20 AM in reply to J. H. Moore

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John,

Do yourself a favor and answer the following questions unambiguously:

1.—What is your color working space?

2.—Do you make absolutely certain that your files are always tagged? I.e, that they always have the profile of the color space in which they were created embedded in them?

3.—Do all copies, duplicates or whatever you call them, are also tagged?

If the answer to number 2 or three, or both, is "no", then forget it. Your workflow is worthless, period. You should never work with an untagged file, not even for a nanosecond. All your files should have their original, native color profile embedded (that's what "tagged" means), always. It doesn't matter if they are PSD, TIFF, JPEG or whatever.

The only time you deal with an untagged file is when some moron hands you an untagged file, in which case you have to make an educated guess by assigning different profiles to it until you find the one that makes the image look best and then immediately embed that color profile, so you now have a tagged file.

At that point you seek out the moron who handed you the untagged file and hit him upside the head as hard as you can while admonishing never, ever to do that to you again or you will never work with him/her again.

Hope this gives you an idea of the importance of always working with TAGGED files.

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26. station_two,

Jun 26, 2012 12:35 AM in reply to J. H. Moore

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4.— Are all your monitors accurately calibrated and profiled? Do you calibrate and profile them regularly and often with a hardware calibrator puck? Again, if the answer is no, your workflow is hopeless.

5.—Your working space should be a device independent standard color space like Adobe RGB or sRGB. It should NEVER, ever be your monitor profile!

6.— Your monitor profile should always be the device-dependent profile you created as a result of your most recent calibration. It should never be your paper/printer profile or a device-independent profile like Adobe RGB or sRGB.

You should never have to tweak an image after soft-proofing. If you do, then you are doing something drastically wrong.

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27. station_two,

Jun 26, 2012 12:37 AM in reply to J. H. Moore

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Sorry your videos continue to be utterly useless and do not aid in this discussion.

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