I have studied the color management techniques as taught by Andrew, Bruce, Jeff and Michael for years and have been very happy with the results when printing my portrait and landscape images on my Epson and Hp printers.
I am a portrait photographer and I use Imageprint with my Epson 4880 and never have to soft proof the images using the Colorbyte profiles.
It simply would not be very practical to soft proof all images (16" and smaller with my 4880) in a production work flow where I am printing on LexJet's Sunset Select eSatin paper on the 4880. Even when I view images in soft proofing this paper profile combination there is very little change in the image. Prints always look great and match my display enough that I am very happy with them and most importantly my clients are happy with these prints.
When printing large images (portraits and landscapes) on my large format printer (Epson and HP) without Imageprint and from Photoshop I have always used the Photoshop soft proofing technique to adjust my images. I have had good success with this method.
Recently I purchased Breathing Color's Lyve canvas and downloaded their supplied profile for the Lyve and my Epson 9900.
The first time I opened an image and went into soft proofing I was shocked at the amount of change that took place in the image. My first thought was this profile can not be any good. I had never seen so much change in a soft proofed image and decide it would take too much adjusting to use it. I know soft proofing is the "make my image look like crap" button but this made my image look a lot worse than that!
I called my rep at BC and explained what I had done and frankly he told me to don't worry about soft proofing ( I'm not convinced he knew about soft proofing) and said to just print using the profile. I did and to my surprise the image looked really nice. Color was right on with my display and I ended up only having to make a slight curves density adjustment on the shadow side on my next printing.
Keeping in mind that I am using a satin photo paper on my Epson 4880 with photo black ink and the Lyve canvas is a matte surface where I am using Matte black ink on my Epson 9900.
Can any of you color management experts offer any explanation to this.
Can a printer profile be so good that soft proofing is not necessary?
Thanks,
Alan
