Color. Again.

[hjulenissen]

I have _finally_ found a setup where Lightroom softproofing _seems_ to provide valuable insight into how the print will look.

Some questions:
1. I have profiled my cameras, calibrated/profiled my displays and I use paper-manufacturer supplied profiles for my printer. Thus everything should be described (to within some accuracy) to Lightroom. Is there some way that I can visualize them together?

2. When I switch a certain image into softproof mode, I notice two significant changes: contrast is a lot worse (blacks seems to be raised) and my saturated, bottle-green foliage is turned into yellow-cast less-saturated greens. Using both relative and perceptual modes, large areas are indicated to be out-of-gamut. Actual prints are similar. Does this mean that the rendered green is actually the perceptually closest tone available from my printer/ink/paper (relative), or a "soft clipped nearly closest available" (perceptual)? In that case I am quite surprised that my prints (with cmyk, photo cm and rgb inks) has such restricted greens compared to the wide-gamut LCD?

3. Lightroom soft-proofing seems to have some bugs. I use dual-display, and when e.g. I switch between the HSL/Color/B&W tabs, the soft-proofed rendering will sometimes switch to B&W (or back), sometimes not. There are some other subtle behaviour connected with mouse-over that I cannot pin-point yet. This does not inspire confidence in a function that demand a high degree of confidence in tools.

Lightroom 5.2, Windows 7 64
Canon 7D/Sony RX100M2
Dell u2711s wide-gamut/Dell 20" sRGB dual screen extended desktop
X-Rite ColorChecker Passport
X-Rite i1 display pro
Canon 9000 mk2, stock (dye) ink, XPS 16-bit driver
Canson Baryta Photographique 310gsm

[JRSmit]

The contrast of paper, in your case canson baryta is about 250, may be between 250-300 assuming your canon printer can deliver deep black. Your monitor is probably more in the range of 700-100. So yes dramatic contrast reduction(blacks, less black)

Does a print wrt colors/tints etc, including the colorshifts look sort of the same to the softproof result?
If so then the printerprofile for that paper-printer combination may have a coloshift problem.

Also the baryta paper is in certain areas capable of handling more saturated colors (bigger than aRGB) than your monitor can display (i do not know about your canon printer, but in case of HP B9180 or Epson4900 it certainly is).

How your monitor displays colors that are out of its gamut is unknown, but can be another problem cause. One a Dell 2412 or 2312 it can lead to a exagaration of those colors, making it look not very nice.

If you profile your camera with ColorCheckerPassport, it can lead to relatively high levels of saturation, depending on the objects you photograph, like flowers, foliages (many shades of green, some quite saturated), or man-made stuff like make-up, clothing.
Whether these levels of staturation are correct is not the issue here, but can add to a wrong display on your monitor of those saturated colors.

Personally in cases where i worked with dual-monitor setups, i Always found one monitor to suffer from the other, unless both were identical in model and type.
Lightrom does appear to have problems in dual monitor setups, and yes the softproof function has its quirks.

[hjulenissen]

The contrast of paper, in your case canson baryta is about 250, may be between 250-300 assuming your canon printer can deliver deep black. Your monitor is probably more in the range of 700-100. So yes dramatic contrast reduction(blacks, less black)

I thought that prints were limited to the reflectivity of charcoal (2%) and perfect paper (100%) to a 50:1 or less DR?

Does a print wrt colors/tints etc, including the colorshifts look sort of the same to the softproof result?
If so then the printerprofile for that paper-printer combination may have a coloshift problem.

To my eyes, yes. So am I right in assuming that profiles/color management generally tries to keep hue (as constant as possible), while reducing saturation as needed in order to fit one color object into the limitations of an output device?

Also the baryta paper is in certain areas capable of handling more saturated colors (bigger than aRGB) than your monitor can display (i do not know about your canon printer, but in case of HP B9180 or Epson4900 it certainly is).

How your monitor displays colors that are out of its gamut is unknown, but can be another problem cause. One a Dell 2412 or 2312 it can lead to a exagaration of those colors, making it look not very nice.

As long as the monitor is profiled and calibrated, is it not Lightrooms job to make appearances optimal within the limitations of the display (i.e. "soft-clipping")?

If you profile your camera with ColorCheckerPassport, it can lead to relatively high levels of saturation, depending on the objects you photograph, like flowers, foliages (many shades of green, some quite saturated), or man-made stuff like make-up, clothing.
Whether these levels of staturation are correct is not the issue here, but can add to a wrong display on your monitor of those saturated colors.

I am not going for "natural" here (see attachements). So what you are saying is that very saturated images are more troubled by color management inaccuracies?

Personally in cases where i worked with dual-monitor setups, i Always found one monitor to suffer from the other, unless both were identical in model and type.

I have one "good" and one "bad". The bad one is used for increased real estate and for having an sRGB-calibrated point of view.

-h

[JRSmit]

Wrt paper contrast  there are several posts on  this forum.

How color is transformed from one space to the other is determined by the chosen rendering intent. What you refer to is the perceptual intent. Others are colorimetric (relativ or absolute).
 Colorimetric in essence matches colors that are within both gamuts and out of gamjt is mapped to nearest in gamut. This only if the profile contains the intent definitions. F.i sRGB and aRGB do  ot contain perceptual.

Its is not about inaccuracies of color management. It is about dealing with limited gamuts of the involved devices: camera, image development software, monitor, print-paper combi.