10 Replies Latest reply: Jun 24, 2007 4:18 AM by Tim Andersen RSS

    Soft Proof

    Matthew A Kraus Community Member
      Is there any way to soft proof in Lightroom. If not, what is the best way to try to approximate print to moniter. Do I need to bring it into PS and soft proof there?

      Thanks,
      Matthew Kraus
        • 1. Re: Soft Proof
          Community Member
          No, no soft proof, yes take it into Photoshop...
          • 2. Re: Soft Proof
            Edward McCain Community Member
            If there's no way to soft proof in Lightroom, does that mean I should abandon it for professional purposes or can I get pretty close in Lightroom and then go into Bridge or Camera Raw to make adjustments to the RAW files that I want to show to clients, etc?

            Edward McCain
            Tucson, AZ
            • 3. Re: Soft Proof
              Community Member
              >... does that mean I should abandon it for professional purposes ....

              IMO abandonment requires extreme cause.

              Depending on your definition of "professional purposes", Photoshop is the only production quality environment for hitting your output targets.

              LR excels at managing the RAW and RGB components of your library, but can also be used to precondition those components for more advanced analysis and treatments upstream.

              What color target are you trying to hit?
              • 4. Re: Soft Proof
                Edward McCain Community Member
                Apparently, I'm trying to hit an invisible target, at least as far as LR is concerned. In order to accurately predict output, I need to be certain that what I see on my properly calibrated and profiled monitor at a given profile closely reflect what the image will look like in final output.

                If there's no way to soft proof in LR, which is what I've been reading on this forum and elsewhere, then Photoshop is indeed the one very good application for preparing files for clients and Lightroom falls into some other category. As a professional, it doesn't seem ethical for me to send a file that may or may not render properly for a given output medium when I have a good profile for that medium. I'm hoping that LR will someday become a professional application. Without the ability to soft proof, it just isn't there yet.
                • 5. Re: Soft Proof
                  Community Member
                  You can still do your major work in LR ,which is stong on getting a large group of images brought to a highly developed stage fast, and then pass them all to PSCS for the soft proofing you feel is so necesary. Adobe has from the start indicated that not all would be possible in LR at tis stage in its development.

                  Soft Proofing is just a final step in the process which can begin with all that LR does provide, especially when habdling more than one file.

                  Don
                  Don Ricklin, MacBook 1.83Ghz Duo 2 Core running 10.4.9 & Win XP, Pentax *ist D
                  http://donricklin.blogspot.com/
                  • 6. Re: Soft Proof
                    imacken Community Member
                    As has been noted many times - even during the beta phase - LR cannot be a one-stop-shop for photographers without soft-proofing. The issue is being addressed, but when no-one knows!
                    • 7. Re: Soft Proof
                      Andreas Norén Community Member
                      "The issue is being addressed, but when no-one knows!"

                      What grounds do you have for that statement?
                      • 8. Re: Soft Proof
                        Community Member
                        I agree that soft proofing is a necessity for any serious photography suite, and I do hope to see it in Lightroom soon.

                        However, in my limited experience, soft proofing is only really useful to me when proofing for a limited gamut printer such as my Epson R200. Certain out of gamut (for my printer) colors end up changing drastically on the printout, and in these situations soft proofing is an absolute plus. For example, in certain sunset images reds will change to magenta when I soft proof. Photoshop's "show out of gamma colors" will show that most of these colors are out of the gamut of the printer.

                        On my new Epson R2400 printer, however, every time I soft proof the image in Adobe Photoshop using the high quality printer profiles that Epson provides, I don't see much of a color shift at all. Photoshop's "show out of gamma to colors", in this case, will show that most of the colors are *within* the gamut of the printer. Hence, I am drawing the conclusion that with the advent of very wide color gamut printers, perhaps soft proofing won't be as necessary as it has been in the past.

                        I'm just throwing this out there. Would anyone like to comment?

                        By the way, Don, if you are reading this you might be wondering how I am typing again. Well, I'm not as I am still recovering from major surgery to my left arm. I'm using Microsoft Windows Vista speech recognition, and it works like a charm :-)

                        Rishi
                        • 9. Re: Soft Proof
                          Community Member
                          Glad to see you still posting, Rishi. Give me a Buzz!

                          Regards,
                          Don
                          • 10. Re: Soft Proof
                            Tim Andersen Community Member
                            Rishi,

                            I too have an Epson R2400 and I also find I do not need to soft proof for color reproduction. However I do need to soft proof to correct brightness/luminance since all images on the R2400 print darker than my calibrated monitor indicate. Due to this condition I use Photoshop for printing and bypass the Print module in LR altogether.

                            Tim Andersen