# Issue with Soft Proofing and Printer profiles - Help please



## Gene_mtl (Aug 25, 2013)

I have very little experience with printing.  While I have taken thousands of images, and even sold a fair number online via sites like RedBubble, I've not really printed any of these images myself.

My wife has been after me to have printed and framed a number of images to hang on the walls of our new home.  I do not have a decent enough printer to print images myself and after reading a number of articles, reviews, etc. decided to use our Local Costco. The results were okay. But they were not matching what I see on my calibrated (ColorMunki Display) monitor.

Doing some additional research, I determined that I needed to obtain and install the printer profile for the printer used by my local Costco (a Noritsu 3411 printer).  Was directed by the Costco Photo Center to visit *drycreekphoto.com* and download the appropriate ICC files, which I did.  I then installed them and confirmed that LR5 could see them.

The image in question was initially processed in LR5 and then processed using onOne's Perfect Effect 4.  When I applied soft proofing using sRGB, I see no change.  But if I choose the Noritsu 3411 profile, the results are muted and hazy.


I am including links to screen captures of the image in question in hopes that it helps to understand the issue.

1. The original file is a Canon raw file (.CR2):
http://ghealy.smugmug.com/photos/i-VsPSNdX/0/L/i-VsPSNdX-L.jpg

2.  The modified TIFF file using AdobeRGB color space:
http://ghealy.smugmug.com/photos/i-kWt3fs4/0/L/i-kWt3fs4-L.jpg

3. The modified TIFF soft-proofed using sRGB (_It is this file saved as a JPG, 90 = Quality; Color Space: sRGB  that was sent to Costco_) :
http://ghealy.smugmug.com/photos/i-7Dw9pkb/0/L/i-7Dw9pkb-L.jpg

4. And finally the modified TIFF soft-proofed using the Noritsu 3411 profile:
http://ghealy.smugmug.com/photos/i-GwtqqTT/0/L/i-GwtqqTT-L.jpg

My question is two-fold. Might I have done something wrong in installing and/or applying the printer profile and how might I correct it?  

And if not, any suggestions on how I should reprocess the soft-proofed copy to bring it closer to the edited TIFF in item 2 above?


Appreciate any and all help, especially as I was hoping to do another 6 to 8 large (12x18 inch) prints.


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## Fred (Aug 26, 2013)

My understanding is that the reason the soft proof doesn't look the same is that the printer does not have the same color gamut (range) of your monitor. The soft proofing is to show you as best as is possible what the printed image will look like. Julieanne Kost at Adobe did a good video on this at http://tv.adobe.com/watch/whats-new-in-lightroom-4/soft-proofing-images/.

That said, Scott Kelby et al. at Kelby Training take a different view and don't even bother with soft proofing, taking the position that the printer is going to do the best it can and try both perceptual and relative colormetric hard prints (not really practical if you're printing at Costco) so play with both setting in color proofing, get it as close as you can and go from there.

I think Kost's video explains the whole thing pretty well in 10 minutes.


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## Gene_mtl (Aug 26, 2013)

Thanks, Fred.  Appreciate the info, especially the video link.  Gave me a pretty good idea what I need next time I want to have an image printed.

- Gene


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## LouieSherwin (Aug 26, 2013)

Hi Gene,

First off beautiful picture. I see why your wife would want to see these on the walls.

I have used the DryCreek Photo profiles and have made some very nice prints at my local Costco at a very reasonable price I might add.

You didn't say but have you made a print of this at Costco yet or are you still just looking at the digital files at this point? 

In either case an important part of the process is that you have to *convert* your images to the DryCreek profile before you send them to Costco. And instruct the CostCo operator to not do any color adjustments when creating the print.

You can do this conversion with Photoshop or DryCreek has a free Profile Conversion utility (PC only). Unfortunately Lightroom does not yet offer this option in Export, it can only convert to one of three color spaces, sRGB, Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB. The Noritsu printers used at Costco do not understand color profiles and either ignore them or sometimes it won't be able to read the file. The converted images will always look strange on your computer because the resulting color values are intended only for the target device, the Noritsu printer at your local CostCo in this case.

This is the case with many consumer labs and the reason why they almost always ask for images in sRGB instead. The operators at the labs have dialed in the necessary adjustments to each of their machine so that they get reasonably good results when the print a photo that is in sRGB. But this is not the same as using a custom profile which will give you the best results especially with highly saturated colors or when you want to get all the detail out of your highlights and shadow areas. In other words it looks great for snapshots but not the best for nice big prints you are hanging on your wall.

Regarding soft proofing in Lightroom and elsewhere.  Juileanne Kost's video is a good overview but, I believe. it is misleading in her advice about using it to try to manually adjust out of gamut colors. For a more complete and in depth look at LR softproofing and color management I highly recommend to take the time to watch both of the the following to videos by Andrew Rodney, aka the Digital Dog: While they were created just after LR 4 came out they are still relevant today. 

Lightroom 4 and soft proofing video
Lightroom 4 and soft proofing video part 2

There is also a video about profile conversion: 
Video tutorial (30 min) covering the Photoshop Color Settings and Convert to Profile

-louie


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## Gene_mtl (Aug 27, 2013)

Louie: 

Wow! Thanks big time. So much information to digest.

To answer your question, I had this printed from an JPG exported from Lightroom, before I realized I needed to think about colour profiles, etc.  <weak smile> I had uploaded teh file to Costco's Photo center online and checked 'Do Not Color Correct'.  It was seeing the final print (12x18 mounted) and noticing that it was a bit off (slightly darker, less saturated) that made me realize I needed to investigate printer profiles.

I typically work in Lightroom using the aRGB color space. Because I will often use plug-in (NIK Color EFex Pro 4 or onOne Perfect Photo Suite 7) I pass a 16bit TIF using aRGB to the plug-in.  So my final images are either processed CR2 or 16bit TIFs, again using the aRGB color space.

I have grabbed and installed the Noritus 3411 ICC profiles (Glossy and Matte) for Costco prints as well as SmugMug's ezprint ICC. I have followed Kost's video of Soft-proofing (Thanks to Fred up above) and played with the proof copy to see how close I can get it to the original.  Your links to Andrew Rodney's video, gives me some additional ways to do adjustments while comparing the original to the soft proof version. (Mind you, he doesn't think much of Julieanne's suggestion to manually adjust the image to bring the out-of-gamut colours back into the smaller color gamut. <Smile>)

Can you confirm that the DryCreek Photo Profile conversion utility takes a 16 bit aRGB colour space TIF and converts it to an high quality sRGB JPEG? And that its conversion would normally be as good if not better than manually adjusting the image a la Kost in Soft-proofing?

Also, would I be better off using PhotoShop CS4's Convert to Profile mentioned in Andrew's 30 minute Tut rather than DryCreek Photo conversion Utility?

Really appreciate your help and hope you don't mind the additional questions.


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## LouieSherwin (Aug 27, 2013)

Hi Gene,

No I don't mind at all. The ins and outs of the color management system (CMS) in digital processing is one of the more challenging aspects of the work. My response got quite lengthy but I hope that it will lay out the landscape in such manner that you can better understand how the pieces fit together and how our choices will effect the final print.

Just to check, you used the term "aRGB" several times and I am guessing that you what you are referring to is Adobe RGB and that it was not a typo of sRGB. Regardless I think some clarification of about the Lightroom working colorspace would be helpful. Internally when developing raw images Lightroom uses it's own working color space. It is commonly referred to as Melissa RGB but is it really a hybrid of Pro Photo RGB. This is a very large gamut working space which allows for a lot of flexibility when editing your images. This is not something you can set, Lightroom comes this way. 

When creating a version of your developed raw file (JPG or TIFF) to be used outside of Lightroom there is always a color conversion done as part of this process.  In the export or edit-in settings you have a choice to convert to either sRGB (small gamut) , Adobe RGB (mid gamut)  or Pro Photo RGB (large gamut). Which one you select has significant consequences for your downstream processing. 

When going to the web or a print service the small gamut sRGB is fine. It is the default for most web browsers and even though quite small it is still larger the gamut that can be produced by most printers. When you intend to do more post processing using the largest gamut possible makes sense which is why I always choose Pro Photo RGB. Going to Adobe RBG is of course the other choice. It is not a bad choice per se but perhaps not optimal. Choosing to use a smaller color space at this point gives you less control over the conversion. You can't for example choose a rendering intent. This effects how out of gamut colors are handled and may not be the best option for a particular image. They are baked into the image early on and cannot be changed later.

If I understand your workflow correctly you are selecting Adobe RGB when you render a file for OnOne software creating a TIFF file with 16bit color. When you bring your TIFF files back into Lightroom for printing you are now effectively using the Adobe RBG color space since the image was converted by the previous export. So this means that the color adjustments when soft-proofing or rendering for final output done at this point are being applied to the already converted image. In essence you are doing a double conversion. Choosing Pro Photo RGB will minimize this effect since it has the same gamut as the Lightroom working space.

Moving forward to preparing to print you effectively have two choices. The first is to output a file (JPEG or TIFF) using the sRGB color space and send it to the printing service provider. That's pretty much it, your done and you get back their best print based on the lab. The custom profile does not come into play at all in this scenario. You also don't get any options on the color conversion, no rendering intent choices since sRGB does not have rendering intents because it technically is not an output profile. The upside is that it is easy. The color conversion is built in to Lightroom and it produces pretty good and consistent results. If you want you can soft-proof to the sRGB profile to get an idea of what may be out of gamut compared to sRGB. But that still doesn't doesn't show you what the printer is really capable of. 

The second option is to use a custom output profile for a specific printer and media combination. These are the custom printer profiles that you have down loaded. The workflow here is different, specifically you never go into sRGB. The soft-proof function allows you to preview how your image will look when printed on that specific printer paper combination, for example the Noritsu 3411 on gloss paper using (*this is important*) that specific custom profile. The workflow is different here. It is quite a bit easier if you are using a custom profile for a locally attached printer but sending out to a printing service follows essentially the same steps.

The first step is to soft-proof using the custom profile for you intended target printer. You now have an opportunity to make any additional adjustments that will help make a better print. This is typically global adjustments like contrast and sharpening. You can try to mess with the color gamut at this point but as Andrew points out this is akin to using a sledge hammer to pound in a finishing nail. The CMS is always going to do a better job of handling out of gamut colors. The one important choice you have is to try out the difference between relative and perceptual rendering intent. Different images will respond differently and you want know which is best. If you do make any changes Lightroom conveniently makes a virtual copy for this specific profile. 

The next step is to render the image. This is where it requires a little more work when you are going out side Lightroom to print. When printing inside Lightroom the conversion to the custom profile and applying the rendering intent is built in to the Print module. It even remembers all the settings that you used in the soft-proof. 

If you are sending the image to an outside print service then you have to do this color conversion yourself using the same profile that you used for the soft-proof. This  entails  exporting the soft-proof virtual copy as a JPEG or TIFF . And then finally doing a color conversion using the DryCreek utility to the same custom printer profile that you used for the soft-proof VC. Alternatively you could use Edit-In photoshop from the VC and do the color conversion in Photoshop. 

The resulting converted file is what you sent to the print service with the instructions "Do not color adjust". This is the same selecting the profile in the "Color Management" tab of the Print Module and turning off color adjustments in the printer driver. You have already preloaded you image file with the RBG values that will cause the printer to create the colors that match what you see on your monitor while editing. If you were to look at this new converted file in LR or Photoshop it will look weird because these numbers are now specifically set for that printer/paper setup. 

If you have Photoshop CS4 then I would use that for color conversion. I don't have any experience with the Dry Creek utility myself as I am on a Mac. So you would just have to try it. I presume it is simply a way to make the necessary calls to the CMS engine provided by Windows in this case to make the conversion. 

If you happy with the prints using sRGB JPEG files then there is no reason to not to simply export using the sRGB color space. However, now you hopefully have enough information to work with some custom printer profiles and compare the results. I do all my printing in house using a fully color managed workflow. I make all my own custom printer profiles using a xRite i1 Pro. When I do use CostCo I always apply the latest custom profile. I find that it results in richer color and better detail. But that will be up to you to determine.

-louie


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## Gene_mtl (Aug 27, 2013)

Thanks Louie for taking the time to write all this.

I am lucky that I still have the original CR2 files for all the images I am thinking of printing. So I can redo the entire process using the ProPhoto colour space.

So if I am understanding you correctly, I should:

After editing the CR2 file in LR5, pass it to the plug-in as a 16bit TIFF using ProPhoto colour space.  Back in Lightroom, soft-proof the image using the Costco printer profile, make any necessary adjustments to brightness, contrast and sharpness as and if needed.  

Send the the edited TIFF (with Lightroom Adjustments) to PS CS4 where I 'Convert to Profile' using the Costco profile and selecting the rendering intent (perceptual vs relative) I had previously determined in LR5 as giving the best results.  It is from here that I am not 100% clear on colour conversion steps.

You wrote:
"If you are sending the image to an outside print service then you have to do this color conversion yourself using the same profile that you used for the soft-proof. This entails exporting the soft-proof virtual copy as a JPEG or TIFF . And then finally doing a color conversion using the Dry Creek Photo utility to the same custom printer profile that you used for the soft-proof VC. Alternatively you could use Edit-In Photoshop from the VC and do the color conversion in Photoshop."

After tweaking the soft-proofed VC in LR5, I send it as a 16bit TIFF using ProPhoto colour space to PS CS4. In PS C4, I then Edit --> Convert to Profile.  I choose the desired Costco profile.  I choose the rendering intent I most preferred back in LR% when soft-proofing.  

By default, the 'Use Black Point Compensation' is checked on my screen.  In Dry Creek Photo documentation on using their conversion utility, they state, "Color conversions do not use Black Point Compensation. This can compress shadow detail, particularly with Relative Colorimetric rendering."  Do you have any thoughts on this?

After doing the above, my image shows it is using the Costco printer profile. Okay so far.

When I try to save (actually 'Save As') this image in PS C4, it does not offer me JPEG.  I can save the file and it returns me to Lightroom. Is it from Lightroom I save it as a JPEG to bring to Costco and tell them "Do not color adjust"?

Again thank you for your time and patience. Both are appreciated.


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## Tony Jay (Aug 27, 2013)

Gene, Louie has given you some really good info.
Gosh, his fingers must be pretty raw after all that typing.
Another excellent resource to consider is the twin books written by Jeff Schewe: "The Digital Negative" and "The Digital Print".
These books are not software specific and deal with issues where porting images from Lightroom to Photoshop and back are required.
Also, while the theoretical concepts are well covered, these books are all about taking prospective printers through the practical workflow decision-making process that is required for excellent printmaking.

Tony Jay


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## LouieSherwin (Aug 28, 2013)

Hi Gene,

Sounds like you have all the steps correct. I am puzzled that you cannot select JPEG from the save as dialog. I have included a screen shot from CS6 that shows the pull down menu where I can select JPEG. If you can't figure out how to make the JPEG in the first pass then try saving the converted TIFF and then open that back up in Photoshop and save as again and save the JPEG. 

You definitely *do not* want to export the converted image through Lightroom to make your JPEG. Lightroom reconvert the image color which is not what you want. 

I don't have any suggestions regarding the use of Black Point Compression. Andrew Rodney recommends it but it is one of those options that may benefit some images and hurt others. It is not an option when printing from Lightroom so I haven't played with it for a while. I know that is there to help match the image blacks with the actual paper black. You may not much of a difference on glossy and luster papers where the blacks are already deep. As I recall it is mostly useful when printing on matt finishes where the blacks are not that deep. It is certainly worth experimenting with. 

-louie


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## Gene_mtl (Aug 28, 2013)

Tony: Louie has been an exceptional resource for me on this. I hope others will find this thread and learn from it as well.

Louie: Again thanks so much for the help.    I'm at a dead end right now. I can get as far as converting profiles in PS CS4 and save the TIFF. But PS will not allow me to save it as a JPEG, even if I close and re-open PS CS4 and re-open the TIFF. It shows me that the TIFF is a 16bit file using the Noritus 3411 printer profile.  But it refuses to offer JPEG as a file type on the save. 

But that's another problem to investigate for another day.

Again, thank you ever so much, Louie. Your help as been invaluable.


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## Gene_mtl (Aug 28, 2013)

As a follow-on to the above. I re-did all the steps described but instead I used an 8bit TIFF. The 8bit, once converted to the Noritsu profile in PS CS4, was able to be saved as a JPEG. It appears that PS CS4 has issues with 16bit TIFFs

I'm not sure what I'm missing by using an 8bit file versus a 16bit.   

Will try this process with a couple of 5x7 prints and see how they run out.  Might also try the same prints saved directly out of Lightroom after soft-proofing tweaks to see if there is really that much difference. 

Again, Thank you to Fred, Tony and especially _*Louie*_ for all their invaluable help.


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## sty2586 (Aug 28, 2013)

Standard JPEG is always 8-bit.
Greetings from Vienna
Franz


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## Gene_mtl (Aug 28, 2013)

Thanks Franz. But my question was more about what am I missing by working with 8bit TIFFs versus 16bit Tiffs.


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## sty2586 (Aug 28, 2013)

Maybe this article can give you more information
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/essentials/16-bit/

the last sentences are maybe the answer

Franz


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## Gene_mtl (Aug 28, 2013)

Very informative, Franz. Many thanks for posting it. It did answer my question re: 8bit & 16bit.


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## Gene_mtl (Aug 29, 2013)

The two 5x7 photos came back looking great! 

Final process:
- Edit in LR5 as ProPhotoRGB. 
- If passing image to plug-in such as NIK's Color EFex Pro 4 or onOne Perfect Effects 4, pass it as 16bit TIFF using ProPhotoRGB colour space.  
- Soft proof on Virtual copy (VC) using Photo lab's printer profile, ensuring Simulate paper & ink is checked. 
- Tweak VC , typically increasing exposure & contrast and maybe vibrance/saturation. (Use 'Y' key to check original again soft proof and continue to adjust until desired results achieved)
- When done, edit in Photoshop (PS) as 16bit TIFF using ProPhotoRGB colour space
- In PS, 'Convert to Profile' selecting Photo Lab printer profile.
- Was told that it was important for Costco prints to make certain the final image is at 300 ppi, so used onOne's Perfect Resize 7.5 to crop (if required) & resize to exact dimensions 
- Used NIK's Sharpener Pro 3 (output sharpening) to apply output sharpening
- In PS, choose MODE --> 8bit to change image from 16bit to 8 bit (Do not know about CS5, CS6 or CC, but CS4 will not save a 16bit TIFF as a JPEG unless you first convert the image to 8bit)
- Lastly - Save as JPEG maximum quality

Should note that when sending the image to Costco, make certain they do not do any colour correction.  Assume the same applies to any commercial Lab where all they accept is a JPEG.

Will be working on two more 5x7s, one 8x12 and finally three 12x18 images.  Hopefully buy repeating the above recipe, they will all turn as good as these first two. 

Again, thanks to everyone for their help. And I hope this post may in turn help others trying to do similar projects.


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