Soft proofing a photograph is one of the least understood aspects of making a hard copy of an image I have ever discussed with photographers. Prosumers (consumers with a taste for the professional) rarely check their images before sending it to their printer, risking the possibility of printing a poor representation of their work. Even some professionals make a hard copy then adjust from there. Waste of ink and paper in my opinion.

Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS6 and CC6 can save you a ton of aggravation, as well as wasted ink and paper, by using a very helpful tool under the View Menu called Soft Proofing.

When you install your print drivers in your computer, Photoshop catalogs the ICM profiles of the papers recommended or preferred by the printer manufacturer. It is also capable of simulating the final output should you decide to print at that time.

In Photoshop I have opened one of my favorite macro shots and duplicated the image. The image on the right has been set to soft proof with gamut warning turned on. I set the soft proof to an ICM profile of premium glossy photo, causing the image to appear marginally gray, warning me of the shine. There is a slight blue representing the paper. But the soft proofing indicates that there really isn’t anything wrong with the image color range, and if my monitor/printer color calibration is correct, I should get a good hard copy of the monitor picture. But what about when there is a problem?

In the image on the right, I have pushed the vibrancy of the image almost to the end of the slider. I think I even played with the saturation a bit to make it really pop out. You might even find this to be somewhat attractive, but by pushing the colors to their extremes, I have also jumped outside of the printers gamut range and printing a hard copy is going to be difficult at best.

For the right image, I turned on soft proofing, telling photoshop to use the ICM profile for photo paper glossy. I then checked the gamut range and gray patches appeared where I am being warned my printer is incapable of reproducing those colors. If I were to continue, I risk a loss of detail and poorer quality of my hard copy.

To take this to the extreme, I went back to soft proofing and told Photoshop to use a matte ICM profile and the entire image took a drastic turn for the worse. Much of the leaf grayed out, indicating it is impossible to recreate the image in any reasonable form. If you were to print this, you’d be sending it to the dust bin and not your portfolio.

Sometimes, you have to put up with a small amount of color out of gamut. I have one or two where a few points in the border area showed problems during soft proofing, but the main point of focus was fine. I could have used my brush in Lightroom to fix it, but I decided it would be unnoticeable when finished. A judgement call if you will.

Soft proofing is also useful in determining if your image might be a bit too dark when printed. Looking at your monitor, the image is bright and cheerful as the image is projected via the backlit screen. A print will rely on reflected light and the dimming of the paper is a good way to tell if you need to brighten it up or accept the darker print. In these cases, soft proofing needs a bit of experience and is open to interpretation.  When soft proofing for a hard copy, I find myself zooming in to check critical areas to make sure certain colors are light enough to differentiate. In a recent print, a blue overall against a green shirt required me to use the dodge tool to lighten the area, making the color change more obvious.

Learn to read soft proof images. In my opening print, I had set the ICM profiles to a gloss canvas. The grayish tone of the proofed image is Photoshop trying to tell me about the shine that will result, not that the black will turn into some flat charcoal tone. You should use soft proofing as much as possible and learn what Photoshop is trying to covey to you. I can think of only one out of over 50 images that soft proofing has failed me…. or I failed it. I think a bit of wishful thinking on my part was the culprit. But I assure you, the learning experience was worth the $10 the artisan paper cost per sheet. Regards.