Soft Proofing

I've always had problems printing, although both my monitor and printer are profiled. The finished print is always a little darker. I've been reading an article on soft proofing before printing, this way you can correct the image before the print stage.
Question is, i use Elements 10, can soft proofing be done in Elements. I know it can be done i CS. How many actually do soft proofing.

Thanks

Soft proofing is really for gamut checking and colour matching
The proofing stage will show if there are any clumping of colours that the target device cannot render.

It'll do little for brightness matching

FWIW, my MacBook Pro screen is so bright it's a real pain to get anything approaching the right brightness level, even when profiled & calibrated.
I have a LaCie 120 LCD which is pretty superb for print matching... but alas it's on a PC.

And as far as I know you can't proof in Elements, since soft proofing is a pro-thing However, Lightroom can, AFAIK.

Do remember that a display is transmissive (ie it is a light source), whereas print is reflective So there will always be differences in perceived brightness - unless you are using a reference lighting source for viewing the prints, and have matched the calibration of the monitor to the target luminance...

Matt

I use PSE8 and don't believe that you can do soft proofing in any version.

Andrew

I use soft proofing in LR4 sometimes, but I just prefer to make a small print first, I do quite a few A3+ prints but I also buy the exact same paper in 6x4 and use those first.. its very rarely needed as I am calibrated and profiled not too bad..

you could consider a colour munki? or borrow a Spyder?

I do use the color munki. But before I print I have to increase the brightness and contrast to compensate. I'm thinking that there must be a more accurate way to get the print exact?

mmm strange, if you have calibrated your monitor and done your ICC with the Munki then surely something has gone amiss in the process....

Yes all is ok except for the brightness/contrast. If when the image is proofed, click the sample paper? and the image darkens. I assume the image can be adjusted to suit and then printed exactly?
I've downloaded the free CS2 to try proofing but haven't tried to print yet.

If you print using Elements to colour manage, i have found the print turns out darker than if you use the printer to colour manage.
This is using an Epson 720.
Cheers
Dave

You can end up going around in circles with printing. I'll try using the printer manages color on my next print.

I've started using soft proofing - it seems to make my pics very dull and I can't adjust things enough afterwards to get that 'punch' back. I know prints are reflective and I won't be able to match my monitor but I'm disappointed with what I'm seeing. Maybe I should just switch soft proofing off - I was quite happy with my prints before using it.
Yes we do seem to go around in circles when printing!

I've never used profiling and my prints from a series of computers (albeit the same box, but with motherboards etc upgraded) and cheap Epson A4 inkjets have always produced excellent results.

In your position, I'd start from square one and undo the profiling (if that's possible) and try a straight print. If that's still no good, I'd look at the printer. Some are more accurate than others. The Epson Stylus Photo series manage to produce good prints "out of the box". I appreciate that monitor calibration and profiling should give better results, but this isn't always the case.

Al

One reason I was interested in using soft proofing was to get better results having prints printed by one of the online print houses.

I was having problems with the print being darker than the on screen image when printing from CS5 and CS6. If I saved the image and printed it from the directory it was saved to it printed like what was showing on screen.
Printer is Canon iX 6550
Hope that make sense

One thing to make sure of is that you edit your photos in the same lighting conditions as you profiled it with the calibration software..usually best in a dark room

Simon

All my editing is done in a darkened room, no actual light from windows ext. I'm now going through the process of re profiling both monitor and printer. I'm also going to start soft proofing in CS2 and then see how the images are printed.