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Author Topic: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop  (Read 8066 times)

David Eichler

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Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« on: June 29, 2012, 02:29:11 am »

It would seem to me that soft proofing is generally much more effective in Photoshop than in Lightroom, because in Photoshop one has the ability to accurately target only the out-of-gamut colors with the color range selection. No? Actually, except for quick-and-dirty processing or images that need minimal adjustment for out-of-gamut colors, I don't see why soft proofing in Lightroom is of much use at all, given what one can do in Photoshop.
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Tony Jay

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2012, 03:45:53 am »

I don't think your statements will stand up to any scrutiny.
Softproofing in LR is as robust as PS.
Others will likely throw in their $0.02 worth as well.

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Tony Jay
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Tony Jay

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2012, 04:13:34 am »

You may want check out a very similar thread in "Digital Image Processing".

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Tony Jay
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David Eichler

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2012, 04:24:54 am »

Okay, I went too far. When making global adjustments, it would seem that Lightroom is quite useful in this respect. However, it still seems to me that for targeting out-of-gamut colors for modification a color range selection works much better than anything Lightroom has to offer, at least for extensive modifications.
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john beardsworth

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2012, 04:52:06 am »

Use the targeted adjustment tool.
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Tony Jay

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #5 on: June 29, 2012, 04:54:21 am »

Thanks John

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Tony Jay
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john beardsworth

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2012, 05:14:33 am »

The original post was very brave - talk about sticking your head above the parapet!

In the end Photoshop can always do more things in more ways to a single image, but is that really the right test? I find a lot of photographers pay little more than lip service to soft proofing, sincerely believing it's good for them, knowing pretty well how to do it - but not actually doing it as much as they'd like to believe. The big thing for Lightroom is to get more people doing it when they need, doing it more consistently, on more papers and on multiple pictures, and wasting less time doing what's really an unpleasant necessity. While PS selective colour may not be available in LR, LR lets you use the TAT to tweak colours, and I think LR's implementation offers steps forward - displaying the Before / After views and allowing you to store VCs for different outputs. Will more people get more benefit? I've some doubts, but generally I'd say yes.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2012, 03:43:12 pm by johnbeardy »
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David Eichler

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #7 on: June 29, 2012, 05:45:02 am »

Use the targeted adjustment tool.

Unfortunately, this tool will also affect colors which are not out of gamut, which seems to me to make it useless for this purpose when there is Photoshop. However, perhaps there is something I am missing about how to use this tool for this kind of thing? If so, please explain.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2012, 05:46:39 am by David Eichler »
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john beardsworth

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #8 on: June 29, 2012, 09:51:28 am »

Are you stroking the out of gamut areas? Maybe try tweaking saturation with the local adjustment tool?
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digitaldog

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #9 on: June 29, 2012, 10:58:12 am »

It would seem to me that soft proofing is generally much more effective in Photoshop than in Lightroom, because in Photoshop one has the ability to accurately target only the out-of-gamut colors with the color range selection. No?

No. It isn’t really something you should be concerned with. Moving from larger gamut to smaller gamut areas is just a fact of life and getting overly concerned with an ugly overlay that treats 1% and 100% OOG the same isn’t useful. Let the profiles control this with more precision once you decide what rendering intent you visually prefer. It IS useful to see OOG colors in the master image as you edit it in a wide gamut space like ProPhoto to insure you don’t over do things (pumping up vibrance or saturation as an example). Especially in ProPhoto RGB, one can create ‘illegal colors’ (colors that fall outside our vision and hence not really a color). One trick is to simply stop moving a slider once you see a change on screen cease updating. You are probably affecting colors that fall outside display gamut.

As to the usefulness of the gamut overlay and manually adjusting, my take is, far too much work for no  benefit. I illustrate that in these tutorials:

http://digitaldog.net/files/LR4_softproof.mov

http://digitaldog.net/files/LR4_softproof2.mov
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David Eichler

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #10 on: June 29, 2012, 01:08:39 pm »

Yes, Andrew, I saw your video explanation. I wasn't sure if there still might be some cases where a custom, selective adjustment would be preferable, in which case it seems to me that doing this in Photoshop would be quite superior to Lightroom. Now I know. Thanks.


No. It isn’t really something you should be concerned with. Moving from larger gamut to smaller gamut areas is just a fact of life and getting overly concerned with an ugly overlay that treats 1% and 100% OOG the same isn’t useful. Let the profiles control this with more precision once you decide what rendering intent you visually prefer. It IS useful to see OOG colors in the master image as you edit it in a wide gamut space like ProPhoto to insure you don’t over do things (pumping up vibrance or saturation as an example). Especially in ProPhoto RGB, one can create ‘illegal colors’ (colors that fall outside our vision and hence not really a color). One trick is to simply stop moving a slider once you see a change on screen cease updating. You are probably affecting colors that fall outside display gamut.

As to the usefulness of the gamut overlay and manually adjusting, my take is, far too much work for no  benefit. I illustrate that in these tutorials:

http://digitaldog.net/files/LR4_softproof.mov

http://digitaldog.net/files/LR4_softproof2.mov
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Schewe

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #11 on: June 29, 2012, 01:30:16 pm »

Actually, except for quick-and-dirty processing or images that need minimal adjustment for out-of-gamut colors, I don't see why soft proofing in Lightroom is of much use at all, given what one can do in Photoshop.

First off, what do you think an OOG warning is telling you? In either PS or LR, OOG can't tell how MUCH OOG a color is, just that it's out of the output profiles color space. But so what? What you really want to see is what the OOG color will LOOK like when run through the output profile. That's what soft proofing tells you. I couldn't care less about OOG colors, I do care a lot what the OOG color will look like printed...

But, aside from the fact that both PS & LR offer soft proofing, the main question is why the heck would you WANT to print out of PS? It's old and creaky compared to LR's printing...sure if you are gonna process an image from PR to PS, it may be useful to soft proof in PS. But I would save the tiff and then print from LR because of LR's superior printing workflow. Even then I would still soft proof in LR because I could tweak a soft proof copy instead of having to spawn off another whole file...

I'll also say that from my point of view (which may be a bit biased because I had a little something to do with soft proofing in LR) the soft proofing environment in LR with proof copies and before/after and the full range of LR global and local color/tone adjustments is superior to PS's soft proofing environment. So, I guess I would turn it around and ask you since LR's soft proofing and print workflow is superior, why would you bother to soft proof in PS?
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David Eichler

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #12 on: June 29, 2012, 02:13:36 pm »

Jeff,

Assuming that this is only about selective adjustments, could always do that and then save back to Lightroom for printing. No? I wasn't wondering whether Photoshop might also be superior for the actual output.

However, as to seeing the effects of the change in color space, many of us do not have the benefit of wide-gamut monitors, so we can't actually see the change until we make the print, which is of course not an insurmountable obstacle if one is making one's own prints. However, if one is sending away for prints or is dealing with half-tone reproduction, is that not another matter? Anyway, it seems Andrew has addressed the the matter for me. I certainly agree with your comment about the LR global adjustments and the before and after views. What lead me to start all this was Adobe's own tutorial on this feature, which seems to suggest that the selective, "manual" method of adjustment is the way to go. In that video, the target color space produced dulling of some prominent colors, and the manual, selective method using the targeted adjustment tool and and a the brush tool was advised, and this worked fine for the example image. However, just try this on, say, a landscape scene where lots of foliage colors are out of gamut. Using the Lightroom targeted adjustment tool results in dulling colors that are not out of gamut, and there is far too much out of gamut to address efficiently with the brush tool set to destaturate. While the Photoshop color range selection method would still result in modifying colors that are only slightly out of gamut, it still seems preferable to anything Lightroom has to offer, if one feels the need to use such a process.


First off, what do you think an OOG warning is telling you? In either PS or LR, OOG can't tell how MUCH OOG a color is, just that it's out of the output profiles color space. But so what? What you really want to see is what the OOG color will LOOK like when run through the output profile. That's what soft proofing tells you. I couldn't care less about OOG colors, I do care a lot what the OOG color will look like printed...

But, aside from the fact that both PS & LR offer soft proofing, the main question is why the heck would you WANT to print out of PS? It's old and creaky compared to LR's printing...sure if you are gonna process an image from PR to PS, it may be useful to soft proof in PS. But I would save the tiff and then print from LR because of LR's superior printing workflow. Even then I would still soft proof in LR because I could tweak a soft proof copy instead of having to spawn off another whole file...

I'll also say that from my point of view (which may be a bit biased because I had a little something to do with soft proofing in LR) the soft proofing environment in LR with proof copies and before/after and the full range of LR global and local color/tone adjustments is superior to PS's soft proofing environment. So, I guess I would turn it around and ask you since LR's soft proofing and print workflow is superior, why would you bother to soft proof in PS?
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Schewe

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Re: Soft Proofing in Lightroom versus Photoshop
« Reply #13 on: June 29, 2012, 03:20:25 pm »

While the Photoshop color range selection method would still result in modifying colors that are only slightly out of gamut, it still seems preferable to anything Lightroom has to offer, if one feels the need to use such a process.

I guess you missed John's suggestion...use a local adjustment brush with auto mask on and paint in a desaturation in the areas where OOG colors appear. Course, that is STILL trying to deal with OOG which, really doesn't matter...what matters is what you see.
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