# Lightroom color management



## JNowakPhoto (May 15, 2013)

Hello,

SO I plan on calibrating my monitor with ColorMunki Display today. I have a question, once that calibration is done and a proper profile is created/used do I then change anyting as far as the color management/space in LR? Thank you


----------



## Tony Jay (May 15, 2013)

Welcome JNowack.

The short answer is no.
I can't give you the full story now - maybe later today.

Enjoy using your calibrated monitor though!

Tony Jay


----------



## JNowakPhoto (May 15, 2013)

Thanks  If you do get a chance to fill me in a little bit more at some point I would greatly appreciate it.


----------



## JNowakPhoto (May 16, 2013)

Ok so I have calibrated the monitor and it looks great but I can't get the printer to print accurately prin.  It seems that the LR images look much  warmer and better than what prints out.  Im letting the printer manage color and making sure the correct paper is selected.  Ideas?


----------



## clee01l (May 16, 2013)

JNowakPhoto said:


> Ok so I have calibrated the monitor and it looks great but I can't get the printer to print accurately prin.  It seems that the LR images look much  warmer and better than what prints out.  Im letting the printer manage color and making sure the correct paper is selected.  Ideas?


In LR 4.4 there is a Soft Proofing option in develop.  When checked you can tweak the dev settings to match what you see on the screen to look like what you will see on paper and ink.   This requires a color profile selected for the printer and paper to be used.  Your printer/paper color profiles are often provided by the mfg.  Or if your color management tool will do this, you can create your own color profile with the tool.  Check your ColorMunki instructions to see if this is an option for you.


----------



## Tony Jay (May 16, 2013)

Hi again.
If you let the printer manage colour then the resulting print is just not going to look like what you see on the monitor.
This is what you are experiencing currently.
Cletus has mentioned paper/printer profiles.
This is what you need.
I am neither sure what printer nor what paper you are using but there will be a profile, downloadable from the paper manufacturers website, that will match the combination that you are using.
I am a Windows OS man so I cannot exactly tell you where the profiles need to be stored in your system but once in the correct location any colour-managed application will know that the profile is there.
In Lightroom's Develop module click on the softproofing option located just above the filmstrip and in the R subpanel the softproofing subpanel will open.
The 'Profile:' option may not be what you want; click on the arrows to open up whatever options are installed currently on your system and select the one you want.

Most manufacturer printer/paper profiles offered these days are excellent but let us know what combination you are using and I am sure someone on this site will be able to warn you if there are issues.
Occasionally a custom profile needs to be made to get the best out of a specific printer/paper combination but this is less commonly required now.

Also select the 'simulate paper & ink' option.
'Intent' confuses a lot of people but basically 'relative' rendering uses a technique of moving out of gamut colours into gamut by shuffling all the affected tones a bit to fit in all the tones that were out of gamut and hopefully preserving the relative tonal differences in the image.
'Perceptual' intent simply maps out of gamut colours to the nearest in gamut hue and tone.
One may think, given the explanation above, that relative rendering intent always wins hands down but in fact this is not true and a little bit of experimentation will be in order.
Sometimes perceptual rendering will give the best results.

The point of softproofing is to get an idea (a very good idea ideally) of what a print will look like while you still have the image up on the monitor.
Most of the time activating softproofing makes your carefully crafted image look a bit strange - most commonly it appears to lose contrast and some of the colours can look a bit off.
If this is the case one uses the same controls in the Develop module, as before, to alter the image and make it look the way you want it to look, before you print it.
If you need to you can create a proof copy in case you also want to display the same image electronically, or, on the web, in which case only apply any remedial edits to the proof copy and not to the master copy.
To fine-tune your remedial editing display the master copy side-by-side with your proof copy to help guide your efforts.
When the proof copy as closely resembles the master copy as you can get it that will be the time to print.

As a further aside it is not uncommon for individuals to complain - once they have painstakingly gone through the process outlined above - that the prints are too dark.
The issue there is that the monitor is too bright and the luminance setting (usually modulated in the calibrating process) needs to be reduced. 
I set mine to below 100 cd/m[SUP]2[/SUP].
The only reason I specifically mention the setting I use is to demonstrate how low one may need to go to match monitor with print when it comes to monitor luminance.
The default setting for most monitors is 140-160 cd/m[SUP]2[/SUP] or even higher.
This is much too high for serious photographic work in almost all circumstances.
The general rule is that the dimmer your photo-editing environment is the lower the luminence setting on your monitor needs to be.
Exactly what the optimum luminance for your monitor and work environment will be can only be determined by you by trial-and-error.
There is no magic bullet solution here.

One can never get an exact match of a print with an image on the monitor.
This is because the media are totally different.
A monitor is a transmissive light medium whereas a print is a reflective light medium.
I have debated with more than a few individuals on forums like this one who claim that colour management is little more than witchcraft and that one cannot effectively apply colour-managment principles and expect a softproofed image to closely and consistently resemble the print.
This is patent nonsense.
With a good monitor profile and appropriate luminance settings, a good printer/paper profile, and some practice with softproofing unbelievably closely matched results are possible with due regard to the points at the beginning of the paragraph.

I would suggest doing more reading and research on this - colour management and printing workflow, especially in Lightroom, is not as difficult as it once was (in other applications).
An excellent resource is the 'Camera to Print and Screen' tutorial series offered by the Luminous Landscape website - http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/tutorials/camera_to_print_and_screen.shtml

With more research under your belt no doubt more questions will come to mind so feel free to keep posting.

Tony Jay


----------



## JNowakPhoto (May 16, 2013)

Thanks guys. I will be trying this at some point today.


----------



## JNowakPhoto (May 16, 2013)

Ok. Was able to get prints to match LR via soft-proofing.

Next issue:

When exporting an image from LR to PS CS6 - the PS image looks a little bit more saturated. 

1. Monitor is calibrated and I made sure that PS is using that profile. 
2. I have set my export settings in LR to ProPhoto RGB
3. I have set my PS working space to ProPhoto RGB

I would assume that given the above the image should look identical in both applications no?


----------



## Bryan Conner (May 18, 2013)

They should look identical.  Make sure that you are not creating an icc4 profile when profiling your monitor.  Lightroom 4 (as well as other applications) has issues with version 4 profiles.   Other than this, I can not think of another possibility.  Give us a screen shot of your color settings in Photoshop just to be on the safe side.


----------



## JNowakPhoto (May 18, 2013)

Will do later today. 

Yes I have made sure to use a v2 profile.


----------



## camner (May 18, 2013)

@Tony, 

As always, your explanations are great!  Thanks for taking the time.

How does one handle color management if one is, say, sending images to an external company to make either prints or a book?  In that circumstance (particularly with a book, where one wouldn't really want to spend a lot of $$ on a test book), how does one try and get the printed result to look reasonably close to what one sees on the screen?


----------



## Tony Jay (May 18, 2013)

camner said:


> @Tony,
> 
> As always, your explanations are great!  Thanks for taking the time.
> 
> How does one handle color management if one is, say, sending images to an external company to make either prints or a book?  In that circumstance (particularly with a book, where one wouldn't really want to spend a lot of $$ on a test book), how does one try and get the printed result to look reasonably close to what one sees on the screen?



If the third -party has a colour-managed workflow then it should be possible to get the profiles that they use and softproof as already explained.
The third-party would then print the files without any further intervention.


If the third-party is not colour-managed then you are in the lap of the gods...
Choose a company that is colour-managed!

Tony Jay


----------



## JNowakPhoto (May 19, 2013)

Bryan Conner said:


> They should look identical.  Make sure that you are not creating an icc4 profile when profiling your monitor.  Lightroom 4 (as well as other applications) has issues with version 4 profiles.   Other than this, I can not think of another possibility.  Give us a screen shot of your color settings in Photoshop just to be on the safe side.




Here we are


----------



## Bryan Conner (May 19, 2013)

Nothing out of order there for sure.  The next thing that I would try would be to make sure that there is nothing funny going on with profile mismatches or missing profiles.  I do not think that it is, but just to make sure, you can check the three boxes in the Color Management Policies area of your Color Settings dialogue box.  Then, open one of the images and make sure that no warnings appear.


----------



## Jason DiMichele (Jun 3, 2013)

JNowakPhoto said:


> Ok. Was able to get prints to match LR via soft-proofing.
> 
> Next issue:
> 
> ...



When I read this step I just wanted to make sure that you aren't assigning your monitor profile to your file once it is opened in photoshop. The only place to specify which profile your monitor uses should be in the OS (or sometimes profiling software which will talk to the OS and monitor directly). If you are assigning your monitor profile to your file, the colours will definitely shift as your monitor profile is nowhere as large a colour gamut as ProPhoto RGB. 

Cheers!


----------



## JNowakPhoto (Jun 3, 2013)

Jason DiMichele said:


> When I read this step I just wanted to make sure that you aren't assigning your monitor profile to your file once it is opened in photoshop. The only place to specify which profile your monitor uses should be in the OS (or sometimes profiling software which will talk to the OS and monitor directly). If you are assigning your monitor profile to your file, the colours will definitely shift as your monitor profile is nowhere as large a colour gamut as ProPhoto RGB.
> 
> Cheers!



Nope.  Am not.  PS color space is ProPhotoRGB


----------

