if you've ever struggled to make an accurate print from a photo the problem may be with the
soft proofing and not your printer in this video I'll explain the soft proofing process step by
step using DXO photolab 6. I'll also share some of the common mistakes and how to avoid them the
starting point for the soft proofing is the finished image after editing be sure to get
this looking just the way that you want it to on screen it's important when doing this that you're
working on an accurately calibrated monitor if you aren't then the finished print is probably
not going to be accurate I'll include a link to an article in the YouTube description with more
information about this I currently have the image I want to print open in the photo library module
but before I soft proof this I'll duplicate the image by creating a virtual copy you can do this
by right-clicking the image and selecting the create virtual copy option the virtual copy only
exists inside of photo lab and avoids the risk of changing the original image during soft profank
now we can work on soft proofing the virtual copy by opening it in the customize module this is
where you'll find the soft proofing tools they're in the color group of controls down at the bottom
and the panel will probably be turned off when I turn on the panel a couple of things happen
the first is that we see this warning message it's telling us that the soft proofing has been turned
on I'm recommending we work on a virtual copy of the image because we've already created our
virtual copy we can just click OK and ignore this message the other thing that we see is that the
background surrounding the image is set to White this is to help us visualize what the print is
going to look like or at least it does if we can see more of the background I'll therefore reduce
the level of magnification for the image to 40 percent so that we can see the white background
surrounding it now when I edited this image I was working in the Adobe RGB color space and
that profile is embedded into the image that's why if I set the ICC profile for the soft proof to the
same color space it doesn't have any effect on the image you can check this using the compare button
if I click this you can see the original image and then when I release it we see the soft proof
again now watch what happens to the soft proof when I change the profile to Fotospeed natural
soft texture paper you can see that it changes the contrast and color in the image what's happening
is that the soft proof is now simulating how the image will look when printed with that paper
but because that paper can't handle the colors in the image they are shifted to something that
can be printed that's why we see the change in the image we say that these colors that
can't be printed are out of gamut it's also possible to check for these by turning on the
gamut warning indicator when I click the warning icon to the top right of the histogram we can see
the out of gamut colors in red now watch what happens if I switch back to the Adobe RGB color
profile the warnings vanish because that color space can handle all the colors in the image
but let's go back to the photo speed paper profile we were using before because there's a
common problem that you need to know about we've already seen the colors shift with this profile
and we can also see the gamut warnings at this point a common mistake is to change the profile
to a different one thinking that will fix the problem let me show you what I mean by selecting
the photo speed by writer paper as you can see the gamut warning is largely gone this makes a lot of
people think that if they use this profile the print will look good but that's not necessarily
true the print will only look good if you print it to the paper that the profile is intended for what
the soft proof is showing us is that the photos be brighter paper could handle all the colors in
this image and it's much better than the other paper we should therefore probably choose the
bariter paper to make a print of this image but there's still a problem with the profile which we
can see using the compare button again notice that the soft proof is lighter than the original image
so the print will also be lighter what's causing this is something called the rendering intent if
you think back to the out of gamut colors we talked about I said that the colors are being
changed to something that can be printed this is where the rendering intent comes in because
that's telling the computer how to change the colors at the moment we can see the intent is
set to perceptual with this rendering intent all the colors in the image are changed in an attempt
to make the photo look good whilst the image still looks okay making it lighter does lose something
compared to the original now let's change to the relative rendering intent which is also supported
by Photolab notice that the image is now darker and if we compare it with the original image it
looks almost identical what's happening when we use the relative rendering is that only the
outer Hamlet colors are affected those are now changed to the nearest color that can be printed
which is why we don't see much change from the original image using the soft proofing process
so far we've been able to determine the best paper and printer settings to use but there's
one further soft proofing option that we need to look at which is simulate paper and ink when
I turn that on notice the image loses some of its contrast because of this most people ignore it but
that's another big mistake what this does is that it makes the image on screen simulate the print
that's going to be produced if you don't like what you're seeing on screen here you will probably be
disappointed with the print as well what we really need to do is apply adjustments to the soft proof
to make it look like the original image I find that it's easiest to judge this whilst using the
split screen preview now we can see the original image on the left and the soft proof on the right
8. comparing the two I can see that the colors are reproduced accurately but the contrast has
been reduced this tells me that we need to adjust the virtual copy to correct it before we print
it if I switch to the light group I can use the controls there to add contrast to the image now
there's much less difference between the original and the soft proof I'll also try increasing the
brightness of the mid tones a little now for another common mistake which you can see if
we look at the darkest Shadows notice how they don't appear as dark as on the original image
when I place the split preview over them that's because my screen can produce a darker black than
the Black Ink on paper this is true of all photo papers although some will be better than others
don't try to make the mistake of trying to match the blacks exactly in the image or you'll probably
make the image too dark if you find that you have a significant problem with this you're probably
going to be better trying to change to a paper that can handle black better you'll also find
that Black Ink on paper looks much better when the print is behind glass now that we have the image
looking correct in the soft proof let's turn off the split screen view and then the soft proofing
notice how bad this makes the image look which is no much darker than the original don't worry about
this though because what we now see on screen isn't how the print will look we only see that
when we use the soft proofing options with all the settings that we've looked at a common mistake at
this point is to start fiddling around with the settings again because you think something must
be wrong with the image if you make more changes without checking the soft proof The Print won't
match the original image you're now ready to print this image if my photolab printing video
is being released you'll see it on screen now if not why not watch my perfect Prince video instead
thanks for watching today and I hope you found the video helpful don't forget to subscribe if
you haven't already and please take a moment to share this I'll see you soon for another video