Soft Proof Query

[taxboy]

A question for those more experienced with soft proofing. I've profiled my monitor and have adjusted a test image as best I can before printing to my Epson R2880 and am pretty pleased with how it matches the screen image. I needed to apply a small amount of curves in an adjustment layer together with some adjustment on hue /saturation to get what looked OK to me.

Does this mean that if I save these adjustments as an action I can apply them to all of my prints & I should match fairly consistently from now on, or, is soft proofing something that needs to be done individually for every image that I want a quality print from

TIA

 

[Chappers]

I personally check every image prior to printing even with the adjustment actions I have. In most cases they are all that is needed, but sometimes an image needs a bit more to match the final result desired.

I use Photoshop and duplicate the image, and use this to compare the soft proofed original. It's fairly quick and means you can check ,prior to hitting the print button, that all is OK. It takes about 30 seconds to make sure you are happy with the way the corrections have adjusted the image to match the result you want.

 

[taxboy]

Thanks for that - as you have confirmed if I automated the process I'll probably be in the right ball park to start with. I know that I'll still have to make a few test prints for anything special (just like the old dark room days !!)

 

[Chappers]

If your monitor is calibrated and profiled, and you have decent printer profiles you should get very very close with softproofing.

If it's critical, I'll do a smaller print, say A5 just to check all is well. Remember viewing conditions can have a significant impact on the way the print looks