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Author Topic: Soft Proof Corrections and Press Printing??  (Read 1197 times)

CynthiaM

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Soft Proof Corrections and Press Printing??
« on: January 24, 2014, 09:04:56 pm »

I took some beautiful photos of my daughter and future son-in-law for their engagement and would like to put them together in a book.  Most of these print in cmyk but they want an sRGB file.  I'm leaning towards Blurb.  I downloaded their profile and when I look at the images in soft proof mode, most of them take a hit in brightness and lose a little contrast.  Normally, if I were printing at home, I would soft proof, make corrections to the soft proof and save it as a separate file and use that to print from in order to get a better screen to print match.  So what should i do in this instance?  Go ahead and make my corrections and send them a soft proof file or send them the original file? If I were sending to a lab that guarantees the work if you let them color correct I do so with instructions to make whatever corrections are necessary for a screen to print match but blurb claims they don't change the file.  They point you to a video about soft proofing and how to bring up the profile but it seems like the extent of their idea for soft proofing is merely to look at how the file changes in soft proof mode, they stop short of directing you to make changes to the file

Your recommendations would be appreciated.
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Cynthia Merzer
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digitaldog

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Re: Soft Proof Corrections and Press Printing??
« Reply #1 on: January 25, 2014, 12:22:51 pm »

The profile they provided is pretty bogus, you can forget about soft proofing if your desire is an accurate rendition. There are many differing papers and processes used, Blurb supplies a single profile, based on a print condition they don't really use, nor can you apply that profile in the process. Hence, it's a hack, forget about it. This is a half baked color management 'workflow' that you should ignore.
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CynthiaM

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Re: Soft Proof Corrections and Press Printing??
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2014, 02:04:35 pm »

I realize this is not ideal but I'm trying to make the best out of it.  When I soft proof, probably about 90% of the time I end up making a very subtle S curve with a slight bump up in the lower highlights/upper midtones range and a slight bump down in the lower darks/upper shadows range.  When I looked at these images with the blurb profile, in soft proof they looked better, as do most of my images, when I add this curve in soft proofing.

I know it is somewhat of a crap shoot but do you think I should hold my breath and just go ahead and add this curve where it seems to be doing the trick in this less than ideal situation or would you just send them the original files untweaked by any soft proof corrections?  Also, don't know to what extent this would influence your opinion, but I have the book laid out all against a black background so that might create an optical illusion making the images look brighter than they would on a white or light background.

Appreciate your thoughts.
Regards,
Cynthia
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Cynthia Merzer
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Tony Jay

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Re: Soft Proof Corrections and Press Printing??
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2014, 02:12:03 pm »

Unfortunately Cynthia, given what Andrew has said that any attempt to "softproof" is doomed to failure.
Unless their is an ICC profile that the printers are actually using then any adjustments that you make are not softproofing and the result will be a pure lottery.

Perhaps it is time to find a company who do have a colour-managed workflow?

Tony Jay
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JeanMichel

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Re: Soft Proof Corrections and Press Printing??
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2014, 04:22:35 pm »

I used Pikto (Pikto.com) for a couple of projects and was very happy with the results. They provide ICC profiles for the papers they use, so soft-proofing with those profiles works fine, THey to need files in sRGB. If you are in the USA, you may well benefit from the current currency difference between the Canadian and US dollar.
Jean-Michel
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CynthiaM

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Re: Soft Proof Corrections and Press Printing??
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2014, 05:16:09 pm »

I used Pikto (Pikto.com) for a couple of projects and was very happy with the results. They provide ICC profiles for the papers they use, so soft-proofing with those profiles works fine, THey to need files in sRGB. If you are in the USA, you may well benefit from the current currency difference between the Canadian and US dollar.
Jean-Michel

So you would make corrections to the file based on the soft-proof and then send the soft-proofed corrected files?
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Cynthia Merzer
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digitaldog

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Re: Soft Proof Corrections and Press Printing??
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2014, 05:55:11 pm »

So you would make corrections to the file based on the soft-proof and then send the soft-proofed corrected files?
If they really use that profile and if the specify the rendering intent, sure. Then the sRGB to converted data should be close to what you saw on the soft proof (assuming the display is properly calibrated etc).
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CynthiaM

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Re: Soft Proof Corrections and Press Printing??
« Reply #7 on: January 27, 2014, 09:02:02 pm »

Thanks to all of you for your responses.  I just might send off a small book to Blurb just to see what comes back.
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