RE: Proof Colors in Photoshop
RE: Proof Colors in Photoshop
- Subject: RE: Proof Colors in Photoshop
- From: Robert Rock <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 09:50:44 -0400
- Organization: P. Chan & Edward, Inc.
Respectfully, I couldn’t disagree more with Mark regarding the use of the ProPhoto color space. Yes, it is a larger color gamut than most equipment can reproduce today. But look, for example, at how limited the reproducible color gamut was on printers just a few years ago! Years ago sRGB was about all we ever needed. But today an ever widening range of printers and displays are capable of reproducing nearly all or sometimes even more, of the AdobeRGB gamut. Even in offset printing we continue to make advances in paper and ink and printing press technology and those press profiles too are ever changing to include wider and wider color gamut's.
The primary reason I use it is the same reason why I want to work in 16bit mode rather than 8 bit mode. It gives me elbow room, or room to work with the entire gamut that the sensor has captured, without running into barriers, so to speak. In photography, there are more and more digital cameras that can exceed the gamut of even ProPhoto (but basically ProPhoto is a decent match for most high end digital cameras). So, even if now you don’t currently own, or intend to buy, a wide gamut printer, monitor, etc., could you very well do so in the future? Working on and archiving your images in a larger gamut (ProPhoto) will preserve as much as the original image data as possible.
A friend of mine on the Adobe forum once asked, “If you were in the audio recording business, and had the equipment to record/edit in a much higher professional quality than current consumer players can output, would you not”? As technology progresses, we will have image files to which we can go back and take full advantage of these improvements and advances, rather than working with images that have already been previously restricted and clipped. These images will most certainly print better if maintained in a larger color gamut, the same way, again, that 16bit images benefit in this way over 8bit images.
The only caveat is that you’re careful that only people understanding of color management, and the differences between these various color spaces, handle your images. You risk the danger of giving a ProPhoto image to someone that mistakenly assumes it is sRGB, for example, only to have horrible results upon output. One reason why you should always output or convert the images yourself to the destination profile. So in my opinion, if you value your images and want them to have lasting value, you should consider ProPhoto RGB. But in the end, only you can decide which workflow suits your needs best.
Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: colorsync-users-bounces+rock=email@hidden [mailto:colorsync-users-bounces+rock=email@hidden] On Behalf Of Mark Stegman
Sent: Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:23 PM
To: Matthew Ward
Cc: email@hidden
Subject: Re: Proof Colors in Photoshop
Marcello,
As Rob says it is not always convenient to view your images in the final print space however, if it's the only one you are using you can just convert them all and work in CMYK. Some Prepress houses still do this as their printing conditions are tightly controlled, usually (hopefully?!) standardised and they're not creating complex special effects, just controlling colour. It *will* limit the number of tools, techniques and effects you can play with and this is why designers will leave the conversion to the last minute and use the Proof Colors option to Preview the final result. See my earlier email to David under "Soft-proof copying in Photoshop - colour management 101" for a more detailed description of the Adobe colour management options.
Personally, I would *never* use ProPhoto as this is a VERY wide gamut colour space that, as far as I know, cannot be rendered with any reflective printing condition. It might be good for archiving but the best monitors today can only reach Adobe RGB (1998) and that far exceeds the colour space of commercial offset printing. This means that when images with highly saturated colours that are beyond the limits of your monitor's colour space you can't be sure that what you see is what is actually there in your image, let alone what you will eventually get when printed. In believe this is why some publishing workflows now require images to be supplied in the sRGB colour space as there is less likelihood of dramatic shifts in saturated colours when converted to CMYK for commercial offset printing and therefore less 'surprises' when the job is finished. sRGB is also the default 'lowest common denominator' for the world wide web as it is a colour space that most monitors can achieve. Once we have finished the transition to a world in which hi-res monitors, backlit displays, digital projections and interactive 3D holographs in 'living colour' are the norm these wider gamut colour spaces may have more utility. Until then, I believe you are working in a world no-one can see. At least, not accurately.
Mark
On 02/08/2013, at 8:26 AM, Matthew Ward <email@hidden>
wrote:
>
> On 1 Aug 2013, at 13:26, Marcelo Copetti <email@hidden> wrote:
>
>> I was reading about Soft-proofing and I would like to know is there
>> is
any
>> way to leave "Proof Colors" enabled as default in Photoshop.
>
> Not as far as I know but the keyboard shortcut is cmd Y (on a Mac)
> which
is not massively arduous. You need to set your custom proof set up in View
> Proof Setup > Custom first though.
>
> Best
> Matthew
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