Video: Soft Proofing and Print Brightness in Lightroom 4
Soft proofing has been a feature request that I’ve heard quite a bit over the years so you’ll be happy to know it’s included in Lightroom 4. This week we’ll take a quick look at the Soft Proof feature, as well as one of my favorite new features for printing that solves the “my print is too dark” problem that I (and plenty of other people I know) have.
About your too-bright display: your pictures are too dark because of that if you need the print brightness.
Now, of course, for print you can adjust the brightness. But to the web or mail your pictures still will be too dark. Of course you yourself will not see this in the web, since your display still is too bright. But others will (at least those who have not set their display too bright).
Soft proofing is a new concept that most people are not familiar with. Printing with soft proofing can be a unique way to add creativity to your designs.
Just curious if the soft proofing reflects also any brightness boost you add in the print module to combat the “dark print” syndrome. In fact, I would be inclined to make brightness/contrast adjustments as part of my soft proof copy (in the develop module), since the correction for “dark print” also varies for paper type (e.g., matte vs glossy).
The video does not appear when using an iPad – is ok on pc mac browser
Any ideas?
Hi,
if you think you do not need soft proofing and your prints are too dark, you may want to read this: http://welcome2oz.com/Assets/WHY_TO_OF_MY_HOW/Oz2.0_TheWhyToOfMyHow.pdf
I believe another way to correct a photo in soft proofing is to modify the hue rather than just the saturation. In the video your corrections reduced the saturation to get the colors back into gamut. You might be able to maintain the higher saturation in the finished print by modifying the hue slightly and not adjusting the saturation.
Hi Matt,
thanks for the information. I only have one question. What are you doing when you are not printing at home but sending the pictures to a photo studio for printing. Do you then use the profiling or the print module and save the pictures in the print module?
Thanks.
Markus
Thanks Mat. One question – you mentioned leaving the printer to decide what to do with the out-of-gamut areas. Does it always make a ‘good’ job of this? As opposed to manually using the Lightroom Saturation brush to desaturate only those out-of-gamut areas?
Do you know of a way of transfering/importing watermarks from LR3 to LR4? I did just get a new computer upgrading from xp to win7 when I upgraded. I tried copying the watermark files to the settings folder for LR4, and they showed up in the drop down box, but the link to the graphics file is broken.
This was very helpful on soft-proofing, a feature I’ve been wanting for a long time. But I wish you had advised us on the “Simulate Paper and Ink” checkbox. Hope you will.