Soft Proofing: Photoshop Setup

Requirements

Soft proofing, in simple terms, is a way to view on your computer monitor what your image will look like when it is in its final printed form. There are three required conditions for soft proofing to work effectively.

1. A calibrated or profiled monitor, capable of reproducing the full range of image colors as they will appear in the print.
2. A printer profile. Ideally this should be a custom profile which has been specifically made for your output devices ink, paper and driver or RIP settings.
3. Color managed software must be used. This example is using Photoshop as an example.

Soft proofing works in two parts, that can be used together or not. Soft proofing simulates the out-of-gamut colors and displays the printers color space (of your image) on the monitor, whereas the second part tries to simulate the dynamic range and white balance. It's very easy to set up soft proofing in Photoshop.

Under View-> Proof Setup, slide directly over from Proof Setup to Custom Color Management Proof Setup

Choose your media/device profile in the "Device to Simulate" pulldown, leave Black Point Compensation on and preserve RGB numbers off. You can try the simulate paper color and simulate black ink, if the results get you closer to the print. You will need to choose the rendering intent you will be using.

Simulate Black Ink-This compresses the dynamic range of the monitors image, so that it more closely matches that of the print. It works by lightening the image's black until the dynamic range more closely matches that of the print. No hard rule here, sometimes produces a better match to print depending on subject matter.

Simulate Paper Color- Tries to simulate the color temperature of the papers white point on monitor. Command Y, or Apple Y to toggle effect on or off.