Editing for Print & Soft Proofing with Tim Grey

If you are printing your work, getting it to look good on the monitor is just the beginning. To make it look awesome on paper, you have to do a bit more work. Red River Paper has teamed up with photography expert and educator Tim Grey to bring you a video series called Editing for Print. Over the coming weeks we will explore a few simple but critical edits before printing that have a big impact.

 This week we look at Soft Proofing

Click on the video below to watch.

Transcript

If you want to produce the best prints possible, you need to learn at least the basics of color management. Still, you should not feel intimidated by that concept because when it comes to color management, there are only two critical components that you need to consider.

The first is to make sure that what you're seeing on your computer display is an accurate representation of your image, and that is critically important because that image on your display is what you're going to be using as the basis of applying various adjustments to improve the look of your photos. To ensure the most accurate display on your monitor, you'll want to calibrate and profile that display. And this involves using a package that includes a device that can read the color values on your monitor display and software that evaluates those results, generates a profile and establishes that profile as the default profile for your monitor. The process is straightforward, and the packages that calibrate and correctly profile your displays are affordable. Just as a profile for your monitor display will help ensure that what you see on your display is accurate, a printer profile provides that what gets printed will be the most accurate result possible.

It's essential to keep in mind that different printer, ink and paper combinations will have very different capabilities in terms of what they can print. For example, generally speaking, you'll be able to achieve prints with greater saturation and contrast using glossy papers and more-subtle colors and contrast using matte papers. There's tremendous variability though, depending on the specific paper. And so what is especially critical for ensuring the best prints possible is a particular profile created for the printer, ink and paper combination you will use to print an image. And in fact, those profiles can be very helpful for evaluating which paper you might want to consider for a given image.

I'm working in Lightroom at the moment, for example, and in the Develop module, I can turn on Soft Proofing on the toolbar below the image, and you'll notice that when I do turn on Soft Proofing, the image gets a little bit less saturated and a little bit dimmer. The dark areas of the photo are not quite as dark as they were; overall contrast is reduced. And that's because I am soft proofing my image or previewing what the actual print will look like based on a profile for a paper that is matte paper and, therefore will not produce the most vibrant colors or the darkest shadow areas. And so with this image, I think this profile is not producing a very good result, which means the paper for which this profile was designed is perhaps not the paper that I'll want to use for printing this image.

I'll go toward the top right, click the Profile popup, and choose one of my new favorite papers, Red River San Gabriel Fiber. And when the preview updates, you'll see that now the image looks much improved because this is a semi-gloss paper, so it will do a good job of ensuring good contrast, nice dark shadow areas, and bright, vibrant colors. Of course, not only does the soft proofing capability in Lightroom allow me to more easily choose which papers I might want to print a particular image to, it also allows me to preview the result and perhaps compensate just a little bit if I feel that the preview is not as good as I would like; so that for example, I might increase contrast just a little bit based on my soft proof display; in the case of Lightroom, that will involve creating a Proof Copy so that I'm preparing an additional version of my image for a specific output process.

I'll go ahead and increase that contrast just a little bit more, and maybe, brighten up the exposure just a little bit so that we're retaining a little bit better detail in those dark shadow areas. That looks to be pretty good, so I'll go ahead and print based on these settings. So again, a very basic understanding of color management can greatly improve the results you'll achieve when printing your photos.

By calibrating and profiling your monitor, you can be assured that what you see on your display accurately reflects your actual photo. And by using appropriate printer profiles for the specific printer, ink and paper combination that you'll be using for printing, you'll ensure that the prints will look as close to being a perfect match for your monitor display as is possible.

Original Publication Date: November 05, 2014

Article Last updated: August 05, 2023

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