Does soft-proofing work without looking to the output profile?

[mikesan]

hi James.

@james

The output profile does not affect soft proofing, it defines the profile that is used for the final tiff/jpg…If you are sending off to a print service online, set the output profile to whatever they say. If they don’t say, then they probably want sRGB.

I am hoping you are correct about the output profile not affecting soft-proofing. As for sending to a commercial printing service, I would not use one which did not provide a print profile that I can use for soft-proof and I prefer those that accept the image converted to their printer profile with my chosen rendering intent.

@james

Just because the numbers are different, doesn’t mean that the colours are different. The same colour is represented by different RGB values for different profiles. From what you describe, it sounds like the colour picker is showing the numbers for the final output file, rather than the soft proofing profile, the working profile, or the monitor profile

I think you are correct. Changing the output color space should only change the numbers but not the way the image is displayed. On the other hand, changing the printer profile should result in a change in how the image is displayed in preview; otherwise how would one be able to edit the proof for different printers? Curious why T70 does observe a difference but I don’t.

@RawConvert

Soft-proofing, as I understand it, is an editing process that allows one to produce a print matching (as closely as possible) the image seen on your monitor.

I agree with this up to a point, and sure colour management includes seeing the same colours on screen as are printed. But remember the gamuts of screens and printers are rather different, so sometimes the whole point of soft proofing will be to sort out how you want your very punchy photo blazing out of your wide gamut monitor to appear when it comes out of your relatively dull printer. That is, you don’t want screen and print to match, something has to give, and you can choose what that will be.

Well something does have to give. First one has to ensure that the monitor’s gamut encompasses all (or most of) the colors that the printer can produce. This is usually possible with a good wide gamut monitor. If the soft-proof indicates that some colors in your image cannot be reproduced by the printer then one has the option of editing the image to bring it within the printer’s gamut. That, for me, is the whole point of soft-proofing; to accomplish WYSIWYG.