How to soft proof easily in Photoshop

[@J5388T]

A very useful video thanks Greg!

[@M31glow]

Great post! Greg, I have an M1 Macbook pro, and I don't have half as many profiles as you; for example, I have none for my printer. I have the checkmark next to profiles in the user folder. Any suggestions on how to install the printer profile?

[@gregbenzphotography]

Download from the vendor. HP has an installer. Most you just move into the folder where profiles go (spending on Mac or Windows).

[@johnsamuelmcelroy]

Thanks - Great info!

[@InfraredVisuals]

Thank you, it was very informative.

[@reesmarkham2140]

Great video ,I us to print on Cibachrome and Fuji Crystal Archive paper in the darkroom. my BenQ monitor works great .All of my work is for silver halide prints. I have been trying to reproduce saturated colors like old days and am just about gave up. thanks for the recued interest I am going to watch your new video right now .I have been a loyal scriber for years. Thanks for all the help.

[@gregbenzphotography]

Thank you for your enthusiasm and support!

[@stkuj]

If you export to web/IG and edit in sRGB should you use the sRGB profile?

[@gregbenzphotography]

I wouldn’t edit in sRGB, it’s very limited. Better to keep full color in the original. You won’t be any worse off when you clip the color for export to sRGB later, and have a better option for print or other monitors.

[@Shayde268]

So you said if we can't see it it's because we already have an sRGB screen, what would you recommend instead?

[@gregbenzphotography]

Anything with decent AdobeRGB or P3 coverage would be a huge improvement. I’m a big fan of HDR monitors, but options are very limited and expensive right now.

[@llYuki0okami]

How to deal such problems while making 3d animations? How to render it as video file that will other see in colors I intended?

[@gregbenzphotography]

Not sure what tools you’d use in a video app. If using PS to edit single frames, same workflow.

[@llYuki0okami]

@@gregbenzphotography Blender. Edit single frames with PS? Several thousand frames? Isn't that crazy? Besides, the video compression itself will change these colors again ;o

[@gregbenzphotography]

Depends, definitely an option if you use batch processing. Could correct one and use an action to batch copy/edit the other frames. Whether that makes the most sense depends on your software options, skills, and specifics of the edit.

[@adonisds]

shouldn't you have uploaded in hdr to allow us to properly see the differences in color gamuts?

[@gregbenzphotography]

Gamut applies to all images, including regular (SDR) images. These concepts go back to the 1990s and the beginning of color management. Also, soft proofing does not work in HDR. The ICC specifications aren't even really complete in regards to HDR yet either.

[@gregbenzphotography]

Ultimately, gamut is probably a bit less of a problem with HDR because it'll probably allow us to stop using the terribly limited sRGB space (since anything that can view HDR should be able to properly manage color). But there will certainly be differences in HDR gamut (and huge differences in peak brightness, but that's a different issue), and we'll always have gamut concerns when printing.

[@adonisds]

@@gregbenzphotography Thanks for the awesome answer, I learned a lot. I'm aware that gamuts are a thing in SDR, but if you export an SDR video KZbin will always think you're using rec 709, right? So no one will be able to see what you're trying to show, not even someone with a wide gamut monitor like me

[@gregbenzphotography]

I believe I exported wide gamut SDR here, would have to double check. Different services can enforce different restrictions or have different bugs, but SDR video can be wide gamut.

[@adonisds]

@@gregbenzphotography You did, but KZbin ignored the metadata in your video, it always assumes SDR videos are using the sRGB primaries. Because of that, when I watch your video using an sRGB profile, I can see the rec2020 and prophoto rectangles, and that was not intended. Few softwares respect color profiles and color correct

[@jensvielmann7662]

Thanks for another great video. But I find this topic very depressing… it is 2023 and the likelihood of someone actually seeing my work in anything other than sRGB is almost 0 (maybe if someone visits in person or slightly bigger profile on some printers). Granted: Not sure what gallery level printing can do today… but even if it can print wide gamut… I probably won’t be able to afford it anyways. So personally I decided to only bather with that for special pics for my personal use. Anything for others I just edit in sRGB from the start… and make the best of it…

[@gregbenzphotography]

sRGB tosses a lot of very printable color, and if you bypass social media, it’s rather easy to share wide gamut color online. There’s a lot of opportunity. Plus, limiting to sRGB from the start doesn’t offer much benefit to cutting at the end. I’d encourage a an optimistic view of things, there’s much you can do with wide gamut.

[@elmafudd9703]

This is what I do not understand. I still feel ICC profiles are the correct method, and Gamut warning is a legacy from 1988 superseded by ICC profiles. GW is also very inaccurate, as a colour that is not visually noticeable will look grey as it is just on or off with zero gradation. The ICC is a printer and paper standard the four rendering intents pull the image within gamut so we should not use the Ctrl Y as well this is a big nooooo. Please slap me if I am missing something. Thank you for your time and experience.

[@gregbenzphotography]

The gamut warning is not fully accurate (built around CMYK), but sufficient to be useful. The soft proof can be more accurate (also imperfect) but also more subtle to see where things are likely to change. I find both imperfect, but both useful.

[@gregbenzphotography]

Also, keep in mind that profiles for the web cannot do perceptual intent rendering (tables are missing from profiles like sRGB, P3, AdobeRGB, etc), so the soft proof just shows the clipping you can expect. You have to manually refine anything out of gamut if you want to avoid hard clipping for the web.