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picturesfromthelow

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Soft proofing question
« on: December 04, 2013, 09:48:59 am »

Hi guys, a question related to Soft-Proofing.
Before Lr4 came out, I did soft proofing adjustments in Ps on a .tiff copy of my master raw file. Now I'm doing soft proofing adjustments in Lr. My biggest complain with the way soft proofing has been implemented in Lr is that I wish to make the adjustments for printing on an iteration of the master file with all the sliders set at zero.
So I came up with a workaround: I edit the master raw image in Ps, save it  (just a simple .tiff with only the background layer), then I get back to Lr and apply the soft proofing adjustments on this .tiff file.

Does anybody know of any other way to apply soft proofing adjustments in Lr on an image with reset sliders?

Saluti,
Luca
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2013, 09:56:32 am »

Create a virtual copy from your master file for softproofing in LR. So you can adjust corrections for each medium/paper separately on a virtual copy and not touch your master file.

JRSmit

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #2 on: December 04, 2013, 11:11:40 am »

Why with the sliders at zero?
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picturesfromthelow

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #3 on: December 04, 2013, 11:20:24 am »

Cristoph,
I would love to use virtual copies, problem is virtual copies retain all the adjustments of the master file. Since I want to do soft proofing work on an image with all sliders set at zero the only solution I came up with is the one described in my first post.

JRSmit,
for me initial developing for web/screen and developing for print are two very different processes that require different approaches, with one building and improving upon the other. For this reason I prefer to keep soft proofing adjustments separated. With all the sliders at zero I can keep precise track of what adjustments I'm doing for printing and also not get distracted by all the previous work I made during initial RAW conversion.

Luca
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #4 on: December 04, 2013, 12:25:06 pm »

Cristoph,
I would love to use virtual copies, problem is virtual copies retain all the adjustments of the master file. Since I want to do soft proofing work on an image with all sliders set at zero the only solution I came up with is the one described in my first post.

JRSmit,
for me initial developing for web/screen and developing for print are two very different processes that require different approaches, with one building and improving upon the other. For this reason I prefer to keep soft proofing adjustments separated. With all the sliders at zero I can keep precise track of what adjustments I'm doing for printing and also not get distracted by all the previous work I made during initial RAW conversion.

Luca

Sorry, I had overlooked that.
Why would you need to softproof with sliders at zero?
However - you still could export your master as Tiff and reimport that into LR and use it for your output media as a base.
I myself simply create virtual copies for output and do the last final adjustments from there while in softproofing.

Anthony.Ralph

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #5 on: December 04, 2013, 02:16:04 pm »

Cristoph,
I would love to use virtual copies, problem is virtual copies retain all the adjustments of the master file. Since I want to do soft proofing work on an image with all sliders set at zero the only solution I came up with is the one described in my first post.

[..]


I don't follow you. If I make a virtual copy of an image I have made adjustments to and then select the develop module, I can use reset to return the sliders to zero on this virtual copy thus taking it back to the unprocessed state. What am I missing?

Anthony.
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BradSmith

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #6 on: December 04, 2013, 03:16:20 pm »

Luca,
For clarity........Do you mean that you want to soft proof your image, with all it's adjustments included, but with the sliders showing at their zero point, as though the adjusted image was your original with zero point adjustments??
Brad
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Tony Jay

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #7 on: December 04, 2013, 03:22:26 pm »

Hi guys, a question related to Soft-Proofing.
Before Lr4 came out, I did soft proofing adjustments in Ps on a .tiff copy of my master raw file. Now I'm doing soft proofing adjustments in Lr. My biggest complain with the way soft proofing has been implemented in Lr is that I wish to make the adjustments for printing on an iteration of the master file with all the sliders set at zero.
So I came up with a workaround: I edit the master raw image in Ps, save it  (just a simple .tiff with only the background layer), then I get back to Lr and apply the soft proofing adjustments on this .tiff file.

Does anybody know of any other way to apply soft proofing adjustments in Lr on an image with reset sliders?

Luca it is clear what you want to do but I am very confused as to why you want to do things this way.
Perhaps an explanation here would allow the rest of us to appropriately guide you.

Tony Jay
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picturesfromthelow

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #8 on: December 04, 2013, 04:32:18 pm »

Luca,
For clarity........Do you mean that you want to soft proof your image, with all it's adjustments included, but with the sliders showing at their zero point, as though the adjusted image was your original with zero point adjustments??
Brad

Yes, exactly. Thanks Brad for getting my point. I apologize guys, maybe I did not explain myself clearly enough in my earlier posts.
So you see, I can clearly achieve this by performing the adjustments on a .tiff copy of the master file: the .tiff file is like a snapshot of the master developed file and when I open this .tiff file in Lr develop module all sliders are at zero of course. For me the main downside of this approach is that I have to create a new file in the process.
So I was wondering if you guys knew of another way to soft proof in Lr and keep the soft proofing adjustments separated. Obviously my "dream" solution would be the ability to create a snaphost of the master file and work on it as if it were a virtual copy.

Luca
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Anthony.Ralph

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #9 on: December 04, 2013, 07:02:22 pm »

I don't follow you. If I make a virtual copy of an image I have made adjustments to and then select the develop module, I can use reset to return the sliders to zero on this virtual copy thus taking it back to the unprocessed state. What am I missing?

Anthony.

Well at least *I* understand now what I was missing having read the subsequent posts!

Anthony.
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John Caldwell

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Brings Up Relative Adjustment Preset Idea (again)
« Reply #10 on: December 06, 2013, 09:44:55 am »

While I see no need for zeroing out controls to begin soft proofing, your request does speak to why Relative Adjustment Develop Presets would be of great value. The idea is that the preset would, as an example, Increase Clarity by 2; Decrease Black Clipping by 3; Increase Vibrance by 3 - and so on, but the Changes would be independent of the Starting values for those controls. You could then impose the Relative Adjustment Preset for a given paper as the first soft proofing step after the original un-proofed master is developed. I find that, more often than not, a given paper calls for relatively consistent Relative Adjustments (for similar images) when soft-proofing is done.

John Caldwell
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JRSmit

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #11 on: December 06, 2013, 03:01:58 pm »

Yes, exactly. Thanks Brad for getting my point. I apologize guys, maybe I did not explain myself clearly enough in my earlier posts.
So you see, I can clearly achieve this by performing the adjustments on a .tiff copy of the master file: the .tiff file is like a snapshot of the master developed file and when I open this .tiff file in Lr develop module all sliders are at zero of course. For me the main downside of this approach is that I have to create a new file in the process.
So I was wondering if you guys knew of another way to soft proof in Lr and keep the soft proofing adjustments separated. Obviously my "dream" solution would be the ability to create a snaphost of the master file and work on it as if it were a virtual copy.

Luca
Luca, i am still a bit puzzled. Do you alter a lot when softproofing for web or print? Or is it mostly the same number of sliders and about the same amount of change?
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Jan R. Smit

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #12 on: December 06, 2013, 03:34:58 pm »

Luca, Reason asking and combining with John's requirement is, that I have just today been alpha-testing a plugin being developed by someone i got aquainted with. This plugin allows to make and use relative presets to use while in develop mode.

Initially triggered by the softproof challenge to apply (small) changes to slider settings to get the softproof to match more closely the master, and then to copy these over to softproof VC's of other images with given printer profile. Say for instance for the collection of images for a photo book using a fine-art paper for the pages.

The alpha-test showed that it worked quite well.

An accompagnying plugin was also tested, this one examens a selected series of softproof virtual copies all with the same printer profile and determines for each image the changes made relative to the master and provides a report with min, max and average value for each setting change.

The outcome of the alpha-test was that relative preset plugin worked, and also the statistical analysis of softproof changes did show a repeating pattern for given printer-profile, although not on every slider affected though.
It does bring you closer at home, if needed fine tuning per image to finish it.

The plugin to use presets in a relative mode had some other neat functionality as well which i will write about shortly.


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John Caldwell

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #13 on: December 06, 2013, 03:42:37 pm »

... I have just today been alpha-testing a plugin being developed by someone i got aquainted with. This plugin allows to make and use relative presets to use while in develop mode.

Bravo, very exciting! I would pay over again the price of Lightroom for this function. The analysis of what SP changes are made to master images is one I hadn't thought of but, again, excellent.

Please alert us if these become available.

Many thanks,

John Caldwell
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Rand47

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #14 on: December 06, 2013, 04:23:15 pm »

Luca, Reason asking and combining with John's requirement is, that I have just today been alpha-testing a plugin being developed by someone i got aquainted with. This plugin allows to make and use relative presets to use while in develop mode.

Initially triggered by the softproof challenge to apply (small) changes to slider settings to get the softproof to match more closely the master, and then to copy these over to softproof VC's of other images with given printer profile. Say for instance for the collection of images for a photo book using a fine-art paper for the pages.

The alpha-test showed that it worked quite well.

An accompagnying plugin was also tested, this one examens a selected series of softproof virtual copies all with the same printer profile and determines for each image the changes made relative to the master and provides a report with min, max and average value for each setting change.

The outcome of the alpha-test was that relative preset plugin worked, and also the statistical analysis of softproof changes did show a repeating pattern for given printer-profile, although not on every slider affected though.
It does bring you closer at home, if needed fine tuning per image to finish it.

The plugin to use presets in a relative mode had some other neat functionality as well which i will write about shortly.




Eric Chan, Jeff, Michael...

This concept seems to have some merit as a future LR feature.  I'd love to hear your comments on applicability, feasibility, pitfalls, etc.  Chime in here if you would, please. 

Rand
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picturesfromthelow

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Re: Soft proofing question
« Reply #15 on: December 07, 2013, 04:02:59 pm »

Luca, i am still a bit puzzled. Do you alter a lot when softproofing for web or print? Or is it mostly the same number of sliders and about the same amount of change?

Jan, yes I alter it quite a lot. My develop style uses lots of dark tones, so an image that looks good (to me) on monitor still needs lot of work to bring out detail and contrast before I can print it. It is very interesting what you and John wrote about presets for relative adjustments. It is very close to what I would need. In any case, I still think that the best solution for me would be the capabilty of soft proofing a snapshot of the master. I followed the video tutorial on Lr5 from LuLa and I remember Jeff Schewe stating that he tried to convince Adobe to implement the soft proof feature using snapshots; maybe it had something to do with what we are currently discussing.

Luca
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