Soft Proofing and Profiles.

[cherebitte]

I'm trying to get a photo ready for printing with DSCL....

If the image is Adobe RGB and I go through the soft proofing preview on Photoshop, selecting their Glossy Paper Profile- there are differences but they are marginal.

If I just switch it through Assign Profile from RGB> Glossy Paper Profile - the differences are very marked. Colours lacking in vibrance and duller overall.

Is it best to adjust the picture after switching the profile to be more like what I want? (ie: bumping up brightness, vibrance)
What is it likely to be like if it was left as RGB?

Thanks.

 

[Pookeyhead]

First of all, is your monitor profiled? If not, then you're opening a MASSIVE can of worms. If your screen is not profiled, you've no idea if what you're seeing is indeed accurate, either before, or after soft proofing.

Don't assign a profile, actually convert it to the profile using edit/convert to profile, and you should get an image almost identical to the one you softproofed. Do this as the very last stage before sending the file.

 

[The W]

Assign is only if you want to attach the profile that the photo is already in (eg. you have a photo you know should be in AdobeRGB but for some reason that information has been lost from the file and so Photoshop is defaulting to interpreting it as sRGB.) If you have a photo in one colour space and you want it in another you need to convert.

I'm far from a colour-management expert:

If it looks dull after you convert, it shows that the photo has colours outside that which the printer/paper combo can't display in the same way as your monitor. That's not something you can fix outright. You can:
- try living with it and see what a test print looks like. Soft-proofing isn't infallible, trying to simulate one media on another will always be an approximation and thus risks sometimes being misleading.
- experiment with different printer/paper combos to see if you can find one better suited to the particular image.
- tweak the image so it all lies in-gamut. You won't have colours as vibrant as you'd ideally want, but it's about avoiding flat looking areas.