Print color frustration

[digitaldog]

Soft proofing with a printer profile doesn't fix the issue you raise Doug as there are lots of colors we can print that are out of display color gamut.
The way to deal with this is when editing the image. As you move a control and which the effect on-screen, as the image stops changing as you move the slider or control, STOP. You might be affecting colors you can't see. Ditto if soft proofing and making output specific edits.

[Doug Gray]

A hue shift should not have happened with a good profile. Saturation shift, yes, but not a hue shift.

It can, and does happen with some ProPhoto RGB colors. In fact hue shifts can occur purely on the monitor side from clipping to 0 of post monitor space RGB values conversion. However, profiles can and do induce their own alterations since how OOG mapping is not specified and printer profiles have no idea what shifts occurred for display purposes. However, good profiles will produce decent soft profiling results.

[Doug Gray]

Soft proofing with a printer profile doesn't fix the issue you raise Doug as there are lots of colors we can print that are out of display color gamut.

Of course, as I pointed out. But soft proofing will get you a lot closer to what is printed than not soft proofing.

It's not perfect since some printable colors aren't displayable. Even on wide gamut monitors. These are clipped. But it's a big improvement over not soft proofing.

Your video tutorial is excellent Andrew.

The way to deal with this is when editing the image. As you move a control and which the effect on-screen, as the image stops changing as you move the slider or control, STOP. You might be affecting colors you can't see. Ditto if soft proofing and making output specific edits.

Yes, that's by far the best way to do it. While it can clip printable colors that aren't displayable, it retains fine texture that can be lost. This is a minimal effect with wide gamut monitors but can be significant with narrow, sRGB like monitors.

[bwana]

I realize the OP is talking about printing from LR and that Photoshop is outside the discussion regarding printing. However, photoshop does have a useful gamut warning function (View menu-> gamut warning) and this allows correction of such problems. I have not been able to get lightroom to show me out of gamut warnings. When I go to view -> soft proofing-> show proof and enable gamut warnings, I don't see the gray out of gamut areas I see in photoshop

[Mark D Segal]

I realize the OP is talking about printing from LR and that Photoshop is outside the discussion regarding printing. However, photoshop does have a useful gamut warning function (View menu-> gamut warning) and this allows correction of such problems. I have not been able to get lightroom to show me out of gamut warnings. When I go to view -> soft proofing-> show proof and enable gamut warnings, I don't see the gray out of gamut areas I see in photoshop

Photoshop's gamut warning function is pretty close to useless. It's binary - you have no way of knowing how serious an issue it is using this tool. What Andrew suggested above about editing under softproof is far more useful. Also, look for when image detail begins to evaporate under editing - a good indicator that perhaps gamut clipping is responsible.

[Doug Gray]

Photoshop's gamut warning function is pretty close to useless. It's binary - you have no way of knowing how serious an issue it is using this tool. What Andrew suggested above about editing under softproof is far more useful. Also, look for when image detail begins to evaporate under editing - a good indicator that perhaps gamut clipping is responsible.

Exactly. Photoshop's gamut warning is not only binary, but doesn't trigger until the dE 1976 error exceeds 6. You can have significant gamut clipping that won't show up in PS. It's also completely meaningless with Perceptual printing as there isn't even a clearly defined notion of a gamut boundary.

[digitaldog]

I’m with Mark. Gamut warning in Photoshop as well as Lightroom is pretty useless. It treats a tiny OOG color and those massively OOG the same with just a ugly overlay. And it doesn't change based on the rendering intent. It could be greatly improved but until it ever is, pretty useless. Predates soft proofing introduced in PS 5.0, way back in 1997/8.

[Doug Gray]

I’m with Mark. Gamut warning in Photoshop as well as Lightroom is pretty useless. It treats a tiny OOG color and those massively OOG the same with just a ugly overlay. And it doesn't change based on the rendering intent. It could be greatly improved but until it ever is, pretty useless. Predates soft proofing introduced in PS 5.0, way back in 1997/8.

PS's gamut warning has a different algorithm with RGB matrix profiles and printer LUT profiles. The former has zero margin and can show colors that convert with no dE error as OOG if they are on the target's gamut boundary. Printer profile gamut warning is different and requires that the dE 1976 be about 6 before showing a gamut warning.

Also, printer OOG warning does change with different intents using printer profiles. It's just meaningless with Perceptual and Saturation intents and close to that with Relative and Absolute due to it's binary nature and 6 dE required error.

[mdijb]

Thanks to Mark's work, I decided to reprocess my image from scratch avoiding the very large contrast and other adjustments, as someone's post above suggested.  I am getting nearly the same image as before( this was lesson in itself) and checking the histogram and soft proofing  there are now NO OOG colors.  When printing, all the green crap is gone!! Hurrah!!

SO, instead of switching papers, I think I will just rework this small series and stay with paper I have been using.

The problem is not the paper--it is me and the heavy overprocessing I was doing.

MDIJB

[Mark D Segal]

Super, good luck with it - and if you do run into gamut problems regardless, no harm trying a wider gamut paper for those photos that really need it.

[Stephen Ray]

Thanks to Mark's work, I decided to reprocess my image from scratch avoiding the very large contrast and other adjustments, as someone's post above suggested.  I am getting nearly the same image as before( this was lesson in itself) and checking the histogram and soft proofing  there are now NO OOG colors.  When printing, all the green crap is gone!! Hurrah!!

SO, instead of switching papers, I think I will just rework this small series and stay with paper I have been using.

The problem is not the paper--it is me and the heavy overprocessing I was doing.

MDIJB

Care to share your final processing?

[Chris_Brown]

I’m with Mark. Gamut warning in Photoshop as well as Lightroom is pretty useless. It treats a tiny OOG color and those massively OOG the same with just a ugly overlay. And it doesn't change based on the rendering intent. It could be greatly improved but until it ever is, pretty useless. Predates soft proofing introduced in PS 5.0, way back in 1997/8.

Just curious: has a request for a fully functional soft proof display feature ever been requested?

[digitaldog]

Just curious: has a request for a fully functional soft proof display feature ever been requested?

Yes, awhile ago.

[Rand47]

Rand,

That Gamut Warning really isn't too useful so I tend not to bother with it. But just to answer your question, it flicked up some black here and there. I did play back and forth with Relative and Perceptual Intents before printing and saw under softproof that Relative would provide a more faithful result, but the difference wasn't that dramatic.

Mark,

I get it re the gamut warning.  Learned that a long time ago from Jeff Schewe and Andrew Rodney.  But with those colors being "way" outside the GFS gamut as indicated by ColorThink, I would have thought the gamut warning would have lit up like a Christmas tree.  Just a curiosity. 

Rand

[Rand47]

Thanks to Mark's work, I decided to reprocess my image from scratch avoiding the very large contrast and other adjustments, as someone's post above suggested.  I am getting nearly the same image as before( this was lesson in itself) and checking the histogram and soft proofing  there are now NO OOG colors.  When printing, all the green crap is gone!! Hurrah!!

SO, instead of switching papers, I think I will just rework this small series and stay with paper I have been using.

The problem is not the paper--it is me and the heavy overprocessing I was doing.

MDIJB

Very cool.  I had a hunch that wasn't helping things!

Rand

[Mark D Segal]

Mark,

I get it re the gamut warning.  Learned that a long time ago from Jeff Schewe and Andrew Rodney.  But with those colors being "way" outside the GFS gamut as indicated by ColorThink, I would have thought the gamut warning would have lit up like a Christmas tree.  Just a curiosity. 

Rand

Many of the colours that show up in a CTP plot are not individually visible in a print at normal magnifications, so what you see with the Gamut warning doesn't tell you much about what's happening in great detail at the individual pixel level under the hood.

[Rand47]

Many of the colours that show up in a CTP plot are not individually visible in a print at normal magnifications, so what you see with the Gamut warning doesn't tell you much about what's happening in great detail at the individual pixel level under the hood.

Mark,

Once again, thanks for the insight. 

Rand

[Mark D Segal]

You are welcome.

[Doug Gray]

Indeed. Excellent work tracking it down Mark. You are always quite the gentleman too.

[Mark D Segal]

Thanks Doug, appreciated. We're here to learn from each other and be helpful.